Some of our subscribers have been asking, "How do I help my kid focus in school?"
Okay parents, this is a tricky one. First of all, you're probably not there in
school so you don't have a lot of control over what your kid is doing
there. I think we also need to make a distinction between the ability to focus
and the motivation to focus. Those are a little different thing. Let's talk about
ability first. Sometimes kids struggle with focus and attention in a way that
could be diagnosed as attention deficit disorder or attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder. You've probably heard of those. Maybe you're familiar
with those because of your own kid. There's some tricky issues when it comes
to the factors that contribute to ADD or ADHD. It's not our intent to get into
all of those in this video today. But even if that's what's going on with your
child, there are still some things that you can do to help them increase their
focus. I'm going to share 2 specific tips with you after we talked very
briefly about the control and maturity model. If you've browsed through many of
the videos here on the positive parenting playlist, you've probably
noticed that we talk a lot about control and maturity. Here's the quick version. As
kids become more mature they get to have more control and they're capable of
taking more control. But maturity is not just about age. In another video, we
talked about the 3 stages of moral development. One of the places you can
find that is in the teaching kids responsibility video that you'll find
here on the playlist. In that particular video, we made a distinction between age
and stage. Stage 1 is the least mature. This is where kids are very
self-centered, very selfish. They're demanding manipulative. They tend to
fight to get what they want instead of working something out appropriately. This
is all about stage 1. At stage 1, kids don't get to have a lot of control. When
we move to stage 2, we stop fighting and start cooperating. that's the
hallmark of stage 2. when kids are cooperating, they will negotiate. they're
open to communication. you can tell that we can do a lot more as a parent to
assist them to stay focused if they're on stage 2. Stage 3 is the highest of
these 3 stages characterized by responsibility and service and empathy
and the ability to really track and take care of what needs to happen. that's
called initiative. This is stage 3 and you can see it's stage 3 as a parent, you
can back off. You don't have to take much control because they are exercising the
maturity to do that themselves. It's important to understand those 3 stages
as we try to come up with some strategies of how to help our kids to
focus at school. So, that leads us to these two specific tips that I wanted to
share. And the first of these is called situational planning. Situational
planning is what every parent does very naturally when they know that a young
child is going to be in their home or if you've got one living in your home. You
baby-proof the place, right? Meaning you go around you take the
things that are low that are fragile and you put those up high or out of reach of
the child. You arrange things in the home to have an environment that is the least
likely to have a problem with that young child. The same thing can be done at
school. Now, you're going to need the assistance of the teacher to do this
because situational planning at school might mean that we're going to seat your
child up front rather than in the back of the room.
You might make sure that this child is seated between 2 classmates that are
least likely to disrupt him or distract him. You might have other arrangements
that you make with the teacher that basically set up an environment that
minimizes the chance that your child is going to be distracted or lose focus.
That's what we call situational planning. You can do this at home too. In terms of
the environment where your child is doing the homework or the assignments
from school. Do you just send them off to do their homework or do you sit them
down at the kitchen table that's well-lit and free from other
distractions like television, video games, electronic devices. You get the picture.
So, we're setting it up for success. Now, let's expand that tip into something
that's a little bit more general. So tip number 2 has to do with lifestyle and
practice. We can set up a culture within the home, within the family that supports
focusing at school, being mature, getting your work done, fill in the blanks with
whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish with your child. When I think
of this particular tip I remember what one of my college professors told me. He
said, "It's a pretty good idea to remember Grandma's rule." What is grandma's rule? I
didn't know of any particular rule that grandma had. He went on to explain.
"Grandma's rule is that you always work before you play." Now, this sounds simple
but think about how the culture of your own home can change if that is the rule.
Kids come home from school, they got some homework to get done, right? It's so
tempting to say, "Oh, let's just take a break. Let's just give it some time." And
there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. But it's sometimes harder to
come back to the school work than it is to come off of the energy of school and
just get it done right then. Plus they've had the transition time from school to
get it done. However you want to set this up is fine. Think work before play. Your
kids are going to be much more likely to focus on their school before they get
into things like video games or recreational activities. So take that
momentum and and let that build. And it's going to take some practice. Don't expect
your child to just click right into hyper focus mode. It takes a little while
for these changes to take hold and for you to get the culture and the
environment set up in a way that supports it. So be tolerant and patient
with yourself and with your child and you're going to get there. That's only 2
of several tips that we've shared here in other videos on the positive
parenting playlist. Go check that out. You also might want to go to Parenting
powerup.com where we have some other resources for you. We're happy to be on
your parenting team.