My friend’s child, Xiao Liu, is two and a half years old. My mother has been having a headache recently. She is reading a picture book to my child, but he is not paying attention. Before he has finished reading the text in the book, the child is anxiously turning the pages. .

Not only that, the mother also found that it was difficult for the child to complete one thing from beginning to end. For example, if a child is playing with building blocks and is attracted by a sound, he will immediately put down the toys in his hand and play with other toys. The mother is confused: Is the child’s behavior like this a lack of concentration?

If we go back to the age group of children, we will find that when children are young, the concentration time itself is relatively short.

Concentration is related to brain development and the age of the child. A child's concentration is mainly related to the development of the frontal lobe of the brain, and the frontal lobe cannot fully mature until the adult is 25 years old.

The sustained concentration of adults is only about 40 minutes, and children's brain development is not yet fully mature. The younger you are, the shorter your focus time is.

I believe many people have this experience: a child will burst into tears because of a trivial matter, but when we have a good chat with the child or give him a more attractive toy, the child will soon be transferred. Pay attention and stop crying.

This is a very normal mental model and cognitive characteristic of children at a young age, so this situation is not actually a sign of inattention.

Now we can see a variety of concentration training courses on the market, and the training methods are also diverse.

For example, through parent-child game interaction, sensory and physical fitness training, and even tabletop games, they all use the slogan that they can improve children's concentration.

The quality of these concentration training courses varies between institutions. Teacher Mei Yao believes: If this kind of training can focus on the child's ability level and provide appropriate and interesting challenges, it may have a certain effect. . But more important than training children's concentration is protecting concentration.

1. Children are born with concentration, and protecting concentration is more important than training.

Chen Yu, a professor of psychological and brain science at Indiana University in the United States, once conducted a famous study on concentration.

He invited 40 groups of parents and children aged 1 to 1.5 years old, and put eye trackers on their heads. Researchers monitored the eye movements of parents and children to explore the impact of different interaction patterns on babies' attention.

In the experiment, the staff found that when children explore toys independently, their eye movements and hand movements are very focused and their concentration is strong.

However, many parents will pick up toys involuntarily, instruct their children how to play, and enthusiastically hope that their children can also make the same actions.

What is surprising about this study is that parents’ active “guidance” of their children does not achieve good results, but instead greatly affects the development of children’s concentration.

Researchers saw from the camera that every time their parents gave them "guidance," many children's eyes would drift to other places, such as their parents' arms and shoulders, and they did not focus on them. Actions taught by parents. When it is the children's turn to play by themselves, their attention is no longer on the toys, and it is difficult to focus again after the interrupted concentration.

Therefore, concentration is a continuous cognitive process. When children explore objects, they are thinking with a high degree of concentration. They are born with the ability to focus and enjoy doing it.

Only when parents learn to be an observer and withdraw appropriately can their children's focused exploration become a habit of thinking and behavior. Protecting children's concentration from an early age is far more effective and has a far-reaching impact than active training.

2. Multitasking is not efficient learning, but will affect concentration and brain development.

The opposite of concentration is distraction. Dr. Maria Montessori once pointed out:

So the question is, if a child can focus on doing two or even multiple things at the same time, will the child's learning efficiency be higher?

In our lives, we often have the experience of multi-tasking: making calls or sending messages on mobile phones while cooking. When the food is served on the table, when it is tasted, it is discovered that the salt has been forgotten. .

I was in a hurry when I went out in the morning. In order to seize the time, I could only do a few things at the same time. When I locked the door, I realized that I had forgotten the key.

When we slap ourselves on the forehead and lament that our brains are "rusty", it is precisely because we are multitasking that our brains cannot focus, which affects work progress and efficiency.

Some studies have pointed out that if we use multiple parts of the brain at the same time, the body will automatically disperse blood to these areas, and the brain will become less efficient.

Therefore, concentration is about eliminating distracting thoughts and doing one thing at a time.

For example, if a firefighter puts out a fire, he can point a water gun at one fire point and concentrate on putting out the fire easily; but if a water gun is divided into three water pipes, he can put out the fire at three fire points at the same time. , then the efficiency will naturally decrease.

Now that we know several misunderstandings about concentration, let us analyze the reasons why children really lack concentration.

When it comes to "concentration", many people will associate it with "attention", which seems to have the same meaning in the Chinese literal sense. But in fact, they are not exactly the same concepts, but they promote each other.

The words "concentration" and "attention" in English can more easily help us understand the difference between the meanings of the two words. The English word for attention is attention, which refers to a wide range of attention; while the English word for concentration is translated as concentration or focus, which means to concentrate.

We can give a vivid example of the relationship between concentration and attention, just like taking pictures. If we want to take good-looking photos, we need to do two things:

a. Framing. There are so many wonderful things in the world, why did you choose this one scene? Because it successfully caught your attention.

b. Focus. Framing and framing is only the first step. You also need to be able to focus accurately to take good photos.

In this process, a represents the child's attention, and b represents the concentration. Just like a good photo needs to be framed first and then focused, in the process of children's cognition, they need to have attention as the basis before they have the concentration to focus.

2. Children will experience two changes in their attention and learning methods when they are 0 to 6 years old.

Children's attention development is different at different stages, so their learning methods are also different.

a. From 0 to 3 years old, children are unconscious learners.

During the first six years of life, a child has a special mental model, which Dr. Montessori calls the "absorptive mind."

Children have the extraordinary ability to observe subtleties, and they can even see details that many of us adults cannot.

My child is now 3 years old. When we were reading picture books a few months ago, we saw a work by Van Gogh: "Starry Night". I'll first notice a nebula, a blue torrent, or a distinct black patch on the left. But with children, I find they can observe more tiny details.

Their eyes are like cameras. With a click, they absorb the entire painting and enter their brains. And if there are other sounds nearby at this time, the attention will immediately shift to other "stimuli".

Therefore, from 0 to 3 years old, their "unconscious attention" dominates, and this is how they learn attention. Everything he experienced in life was absorbed and internalized by him, making him a unique person and laying a solid foundation for all-round development in the future.

b. From 3 to 6 years old, conscious attention begins to sprout.

When children are 3 to 6 years old, they are still absorbing minds, but the difference is that children gradually have self-thinking and consciously pay attention to things around them.

While absorbing the environment, he will have his own opinions, and may also question and propose his own choices. They will start to think consciously: What do I like? What do I want to do? They will begin to consciously control themselves and focus on their own interests and hobbies.

When a child is attracted to an object, his attention begins to focus, and the body and mind work together to form concentration. The duration of concentration has a great relationship with the development of a child's brain. For younger children, their brain development is not yet mature and their concentration time is even shorter.

We will see that as the age of children continues to grow, the time of concentration will become longer and longer, and the range of duration and flexibility will also increase. Whether you can focus on one thing for a long time mainly depends on:

a. Whether the things in life can attract the child's attention enough. (Is this thing fun?)

b. Are things in life interesting and challenging? (Is this thing too simple and boring? Or is it too complicated and frustrating?)

c. Do children have good concentration habits over a long period of time? (Does the adult interaction mode dominate too much?)

When a child is concentrating on playing with Lego blocks, would you do this:

a. Say to the child: "Is the baby thirsty?" Thirsty? Drink some water!" Then handed the water glass to the child. (Object intervention)

b. The child has a runny nose, grab a handful of tissues and wipe it on his nose.

(Physical intervention)

c. "Let's build a big castle!" (Give suggestions, lead activities)

d. "Baby, what color is this building block? Red How do you say it in English? ” (Teaching Guidance)

Every time a child is about to enter the world of his own concentration, our self-proclaimed “love, companionship and guidance” will interrupt the child again and again. The neural pathways in the brain are constantly being cut off and blocked, and over time, it becomes less easy for them to focus.

A primary school student will soon find it boring if he plays football with a group of kindergarten children. A lack of challenge takes away the joy of participation, let alone focused play.

And if he plays football with a group of children of the same age, or even older children, the physical and social difficulties will increase, and he will soon start playing happily, and the child will focus on studying how to play. Cooperate with others to kick the ball into the opponent's goal. The right challenge can keep children focused!

We also need to consider the impact of sleep on children’s concentration. Ensuring enough high-quality sleep has an important impact on children's focused and sustained cognitive activities during the day.

As Dr. Carskaton said:

More and more studies show that sleep can optimize the function of the brain and body, and if a certain amount of sleep is lacking for a long time, the body will Falling into a vicious cycle. Just like a machine, if it is turned on and working for a long time, the CPU will be overloaded, which will cause the machine to heat up, even crash or even burn out and be scrapped.

Sleep is to give the brain adequate rest. During sleep, the brain is like playing a movie, reviewing what happened during the day and pruning information that is not commonly used to free up more space, strengthen the neural pathways of commonly used information, and automatically organize and consolidate memories.

Many mothers have this experience: their children did not sleep well the day before, and they easily get "getting angry" after getting up. Waking up with anger will affect the child's emotional health and stable development, and is also not conducive to the child's focused study during the day.

Parents and children of children with learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or autism spectrum disorders (ASD) face additional challenges because these children , difficulty controlling one's attention. They suffer from poor focus, attention disorders, and even impulsive or hyperactive behavior problems.

Concentration is the key to a child's success in learning and doing things, and will have an important impact on a child's life. Lack of concentration can lead to physical and psychological imbalances in children.

A lack of concentration can cause children to be unable to complete structured or goal-oriented activities, such as taking care of themselves, doing housework, doing homework, etc.

When my child first entered kindergarten at the age of two and a half, he cried anxiously because he couldn't button up buttons and was afraid of being laughed at by other classmates.

Later, the teacher taught the child very patiently, and the school environment also provided a button clothing frame (a Montessori teaching aid) for him to practice buttoning. When I saw the photo of him studying in kindergarten sent by his teacher, he was so focused during practice!

After a while, he will not only button up his own buttons, but also help new children button up. The result of his concentration was that his previous psychological holes of fear and inferiority disappeared and were replaced by confidence and pride.

If a child is inattentive, cannot keep up with the teacher's pace, and always has a partial understanding of knowledge, he will not be able to keep up with the progress of learning. Children cannot find fun in the learning process and give up easily.

Children with poor attention span are often regarded as “not smart and do not study well.” This denies the child’s own ability to a certain extent, causing the child to greatly reduce his interest in learning, resulting in A vicious cycle.

Children with poor concentration will be easily affected by the smallest things, find it difficult to restrain themselves and concentrate on doing things, and have poor self-discipline. If the order of school and society cannot be respected for a long time, "naughty children" will need more and greater challenges to adapt to society and collective life when they grow up, and they will also be prone to psychological problems.

When children are 0 to 6 years old, cultivating concentration is to lay the foundation for children to become positive thinkers in the future. As parents, we can create an environment to help our children achieve a "flow state" and have a higher ability to focus.

Have you ever had this experience: reading an interesting book, the plot of the book is so ups and downs and fascinating that a long time has passed and you didn't even notice when it got dark. This kind of super forgetfulness and super concentration is the "flow state".

1. "Flow state" is the optimal experience of concentration and excellent spiritual enjoyment.

The term mental flow state was first proposed by the famous positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmi. He believed:

I used to have many My experience of working with children aged 0 to 3 years old, including a 2-year-old girl named Tiantian, left a very deep impression on me.

That day she was doing a "post-work" Montessori operation at school.

The so-called pasting is to use a small brush to dip some cut paper shapes (triangles, circles, etc.) into glue, paste them on another small card, and finally use a piece of Press with a special cloth to remove excess glue.

Tiantian was extremely focused during the whole process of pasting, pasting one small card after another, 8 at a time, until all the cards were used up.

She worked completely selflessly, not even bothering to wipe the small beads of sweat on her forehead. After finishing the small card, she smiled with relief and ran towards me with the card: Teacher, look! I posted it!

This kind of selfless concentration, accompanied by a sense of excitement, happiness, and fulfillment, is the flow state.

2. Create an orderly environment, which is conducive to better concentration and promotes the generation of flow state.

We can help children more easily achieve a highly focused flow state by creating an environment. We adults all have this experience: it is difficult to concentrate in a noisy environment, but in a quiet coffee shop or book bar, we can concentrate for an hour or even longer and finish reading a book in one go.

The difference lies in an environment that has a sense of order and does not interfere with concentration.

When my child was two years old, he loved playing with Legos. But because there are so many building blocks, often on the floor and in the gaps between the sofa, sometimes I can’t find the building blocks I want, and I cry out in a hurry, and my concentration time is very short.

Later, I adjusted a method: I just provided the child with a special "work mat", and the child was able to focus on playing with building blocks for nearly an hour!

Ideally, this work mat should be plain in color. If it is colorful or even has many cartoon characters on it, it will distract the child. Every time my children play with Lego bricks, I tell them: Let’s find a home for the bricks! Have your child place all the blocks they need on the mat.

When our eyes are effectively focused on the mat, the efficiency will be improved and the spirit will be more focused. When the "castle" in their minds is completed, the children will also feel the joy from the heart! The state of selfless flow and concentration naturally arises.

3. Grasp the golden ratio of challenges and skills to make learning more focused and interesting.

In order to achieve the highest level of concentration, the difficulty coefficient must match your own ability. The same is true for children's learning. This means that we must be good at observing children, understand their ability levels, and provide them with relatively difficult things for them to do. This has many similarities with Vygotsky’s theory of zone of proximal development.

Just like when we play games, when we are novices, our abilities are relatively low and our skills are not proficient, so the level difficulty set by the game is also relatively low. In this way, ability and challenge are in a golden ratio, and we will find it interesting and want to continue playing.

As we continue to practice, our abilities improve. If the challenge remains the same, many people will find it boring; and if the difficulty level suddenly increases exponentially, they will feel stressed and anxious. Lead to giving up on learning.

Therefore, we can say that the best state of learning is the state that is more than enough for the child's current ability level. In this range, it is easiest for us to achieve a focused flow state.

4. Cultivate children's sense of consciousness and control, which will produce a continuous flow state and have super high concentration.

Regarding cultivating and protecting children’s concentration, Dr. Montessori once pointed out:

To put it simply, it is to create an environment where children have “something to do” and an environment where children feel An environment where you can control things.

a. "Please help me, let me do it myself!" Independent children have a greater sense of control and are more likely to achieve selfless concentration.

Concentration is an inner mental strength. When my child was 1 year old, he had just learned to take a few steps. I gave my child a push cart and he spent almost the whole day practicing how to move himself with the help of the cart!

The child has completely achieved selfless concentration. This concentration is not taught to him by others, but is driven by his inner self. He completely enjoys the feeling of controlling himself and the present moment. In the process of practicing toddlerhood, he gradually learned how to use his own strength to balance his body, moving towards a new milestone of independence.

b. Help children to be aware of their own emotions and states, and they will self-correct and achieve a state of concentration.

Unless a person learns to control his thoughts and feelings, he cannot achieve a state of concentration, let alone a complete person. If we can help children become aware of their own emotions and states, we can help them develop their ability to focus.

Once the child was trying to put together a tangram puzzle several times, but no matter how hard he put the last few pieces, he couldn't put them in, so his mouth became as pouting as a soy sauce bottle and he lost his temper. I walked over gently and said:

-- "You feel a little angry. You have tried many methods, but why can't you let it go?" (Help children be aware of their emotions) < /p>

-- "Let mom give it a try!" (Give the child a demonstration)

After I demonstrated several times, the child took the tangram and began to focus on building it again. I found that we don’t need to specifically point out the children’s mistakes. After one or two observations and demonstrations by adults, they can correct themselves until they think they are perfect.

During this process, the child's attention is naturally focused together, the body and mind are integrated, and they operate efficiently, feeling extremely happy and confident in their hearts.

Sleep can help children develop good physical and mental development, and is also an important cornerstone of children’s concentration development. It is the responsibility of parents to plan their children's sleep time and help them develop good sleep habits.

We can assess whether children can effectively calm themselves down based on their age. Here are some good ways to help your child get a good night's sleep:

1. Try to develop a "bedtime ritual" that is exclusive to your child. It can be taking a bath, reading a story, or changing into soft pajamas. These rituals can give the child a positive psychological hint: I am going to sleep!

2. Dim the lights and close the curtains 30 minutes before going to bed. Dim light will deepen the child's secretion of melatonin, and reducing interference can help the child fall asleep faster.

3. Increase the amount of exercise during the day and avoid taking too long naps. If the child sleeps for too long during the day and does not exercise enough, it will inevitably affect the child's sleep at night. When the child becomes sleepy to a certain extent, it will turn into a nauseating cycle of sleepiness. Properly controlling your child's sleep time during the day can make it easier to fall asleep at night.

When we spend time with our children, try to be an active observer! Being positive means not intervening too much in children's games; being positive means that we do not pick up our mobile phones; being positive means that we do not replace the children's ideas with our own; being positive means that when children encounter real difficulties, Provide timely help and demonstration.

1. Independent and voluntary choice is the perpetual motion machine that forms the child’s concentration.

In the process of playing with children, if we observe carefully, they will tell us what they want to do and how to do it. When children initiate this game on their own, they will have more concentration and willingness. They are true to their hearts and choices, and enjoy it completely.

2. No interruption means guidance at a higher level to help children develop their concentration and problem-solving abilities in an all-round way.

Governing by doing nothing is a higher level of parental realm. Accompanying children without doing much requires more keen observation and self-control on the part of adults. However, this approach will yield a child who is more likely to focus and find ways to solve problems. Every time we give a child unnecessary help, we deprive him of the opportunity to grow.

Montessori said that concentration is the unity of body and mind. It allows us to immerse ourselves in one thing without being disturbed by the outside world.

When children can focus on one thing, their needs are met. Children will focus on things they can accomplish and control, rather than things they cannot control.

To cultivate children's concentration, parents need to help their children understand themselves. We also need to create an environment that helps children eliminate unnecessary distractions. We need to work hard to control ourselves, not to provide unnecessary help, and not to let ourselves become a stumbling block in shaping our children's concentration. When children follow their hearts and do things, they will feel the beauty of focused flow.

They will understand that being able to complete one thing with concentration turns out to be such a happy thing!