Not only that, the mother also found it difficult for the child to finish one thing from beginning to end. For example, children are playing with building blocks, attracted by a sound, and immediately put down their toys to play with others. Mother is very puzzled: is this behavior of children inattentive?
If we go back to childhood, we will find that when children are young, the time of concentration is relatively short.
Concentration is related to brain development and children's age. Children's concentration is mainly related to the development of the frontal lobe of the brain, which will not fully mature until adults are 25 years old.
Adults' continuous concentration lasts about 40 minutes, while children's brain development is not yet fully mature. The younger you are, the shorter your concentration time will be.
I believe many people have the experience that children cry because of a little thing, but when we have a good chat with them or give them an attractive toy, they will soon divert their attention and stop crying.
This is a normal mental model and a cognitive feature of children at an early age, so this situation is not actually a manifestation of inattention.
Now you can see all kinds of intensive training courses on the market, and the training methods are also varied.
For example, through parent-child game interaction, physical training and even table games, slogans can improve children's concentration.
The quality of these intensive training courses varies from institution to institution. Teacher Mei Yao believes that this kind of training may have certain effect if it can focus on children's ability level and give appropriate and interesting challenges. But protecting children's concentration is more important than training them.
1. Children are naturally focused. Protecting concentration is more important than training.
Chen Yu, a professor of psychology and brain science at Indiana University, once did a famous attention study.
He invited 40 groups of parents and children of 1 ~ 1.5 to wear eye tracker on their heads. By monitoring the eye movement data of parents and children, the researchers explored the effects of different interaction modes on infants' concentration.
In the experiment, the staff found that children are very focused on eye movements and hand movements when exploring toys independently, and their concentration is very strong.
However, many parents will involuntarily pick up toys, instruct their children how to play, and eagerly expect their children to do the same.
What is surprising about this study is that parents actively "guide" their children, which has not achieved good results, but has greatly affected the development of children's concentration.
Researchers can see from the lens that every time parents "guide", many children's eyes will drift to other places, such as their parents' arms and shoulders, and they are not attentive to the actions taught by their parents. When it's children's turn to play by themselves, their attention is no longer focused on toys, so it's hard to focus on the interrupted attention.
Therefore, concentration is a continuous cognitive process. When children explore things, their thinking is highly concentrated. They are born with this ability to concentrate, and they are willing to do so.
Parents learn to be an observer and quit appropriately, so that children's focused exploration becomes a habit of thinking and behavior. Protecting children's concentration from childhood is far more effective and far-reaching than active training.
2. One mind and two tasks are not efficient learning, but will affect concentration and brain development.
The opposite of concentration is distraction. Dr. maria montessori once pointed out:
Then the question is, if children can concentrate on doing two or more things at the same time, is their learning efficiency higher?
In our life, we often have the experience of multitasking: cooking while talking on the phone or sending messages on our mobile phones, and when the dishes are served, we find that we forgot to put salt.
When I went out in the morning, I was in a hurry. In order to seize the time, I can only do several things at the same time. When I locked the door, I found that I had forgotten my key.
When we pat ourselves on the forehead and sigh that our heads are "rusty", it is precisely because of multitasking that our brains can't concentrate, which affects the progress and efficiency of our work.
Studies have shown that if we use multiple parts of the brain at the same time, the body will automatically disperse blood to these areas, but the brain will become dull.
Therefore, concentration is to eliminate distractions and do only one thing at a time.
For example, a fireman put out a fire. If the water gun is aimed at the fire point, it is easy to put out the fire by concentrating fire. However, if a water gun is divided into three water pipes and put out the fire at three fire points at the same time, the efficiency will naturally decrease.
Understand several misunderstandings of concentration. Let's analyze the reasons why children really lack concentration.
When it comes to "concentration", many people will associate it with "attention", which literally means the same in Chinese. But in fact, they are not exactly the same concept, but promote each other.
The words "concentration" and "attention" in English can help us understand the difference between these two meanings more easily. Attention is attention in English, which refers to extensive attention; Concentration in English will be translated into concentration or focus, which means concentration.
The relationship between concentration and attention, we can give an image example, just like taking pictures. To take good photos, we need to do two things:
A. take a picture. Everything in the world is beautiful. Why did you choose this scene alone? Because it succeeded in getting your attention.
B. focus. Framing and composition are only the first step, and you need to be able to focus accurately to take good photos.
In this process, A stands for children's attention and B stands for concentration. Just like a good photo needs to be seen before focusing, in the process of children's cognition, attention is needed as the basis to concentrate.
2. When children are 0 ~ 6 years old, they will experience two changes in attention and learning style.
Children's attention development is different at different stages, so their learning styles are different.
A child aged 0 ~ 3 is an unconscious learner.
In the first six years of life, children have a special mental model, which Dr. Montessori calls "absorbing the mind."
Children have a super ability to observe details, and they can even see details that many of us adults don't need to observe.
My child is 3 years old now. A few months ago, when we were looking at the picture book, we saw a painting by Van Gogh: Starry Sky. I will first notice the nebula, the blue torrent, or the obvious black on the left. But for children, I find that they can observe tiny details better.
Their eyes are like cameras. When they click, they absorb the whole picture and enter the brain. And if there are other sounds nearby at this time, attention will immediately shift to another "stimulus".
So from 0 to 3 years old, their "unconscious attention" is dominant, which is the way they pay attention to learning. Everything he experienced in his life was absorbed and internalized by him, which made him a unique person and laid a solid foundation for all-round development in the future.
B.3 ~ 6 years old, conscious attention begins to sprout.
By the time children are 3 to 6 years old, they are still absorbing their 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 views, or he may question and put forward his own choices. They will start to think consciously: What do I like? what would i like to do ? They will start to consciously control themselves and focus on their hobbies.
When a child is attracted by an object, attention begins to concentrate, and the operation of body and mind will form concentration. The duration of concentration has a great relationship with the development of children's brain. For young children, the brain development is not yet mature, and the time of concentration is even shorter.
We will see that as children grow older, the time of concentration will become longer and longer, and the flexibility of the scope of persistence will also increase. Whether you can concentrate on doing one thing for a long time mainly depends on:
A. whether things in life can attract children's attention enough. Is this thing fun? )
B. Are things in life interesting and challenging? Is this thing too simple and boring? Or too complicated and frustrating? )
C. Does the child have a good habit of concentration for a long time? (Does the adult interaction mode dominate too much? )
When children concentrate on playing with tall building blocks, do you do this:
A. Say to the child: "Is the baby thirsty? Drink some water! " Then pass the water cup to the child. (Project intervention)
B.the child has a runny nose. Grab a tissue and wipe it on his nose. (Physical intervention)
C. "Let's build a big castle!" (Providing advice and leading activities)
D. "Baby, what color is this building block? How do you say red in English? " (Teaching guidance)
Whenever a child is about to enter his own world of concentration, our self-thought "love, companionship and guidance" will interrupt the child again and again, and the neural pathways in the brain will be cut off and stopped. In the long run, they will no longer be able to concentrate easily.
If a pupil plays football with a group of kindergarten children, he will soon get bored. Lack of challenge will lose the fun of participating, let alone focusing on playing.
However, if he plays football with a group of children of the same age, even older children, his physical and social difficulties will increase, and he will soon like playing football. The children concentrate on learning how to cooperate with others to kick the ball into the opponent's goal. Appropriate challenges can keep children focused!
We also need to consider the effect of sleep on children's concentration. Ensuring adequate quality sleep has an important impact on children's focused and sustained cognitive activities during the day.
As Dr. Cascadon said:
More and more studies show that sleep can optimize the functions of brain and body. If you lack a certain amount of sleep for a long time, your body will fall into a vicious circle. Just like a machine, if it is turned on for a long time and the CPU is overloaded, it will cause the machine to heat up, even crash and even burn out.
Sleep is to give the brain a full rest. When sleeping, the brain reviews what happened during the day, prunes information that is not commonly used, frees up more space, strengthens the neural pathways of commonly used information, and automatically sorts out and consolidates memories.
Many mothers have this experience: children didn't sleep well the day before, and it is easy to get up after getting up. Getting up will affect the healthy and stable development of children's emotions, and it is not conducive to children's concentrated study during the day.
Parents and children with learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will face more challenges because it is difficult for these children to control their attention. They lack the ability to concentrate, are distracted, and even have impulsive or hyperactive behavior problems.
Concentration is the key to children's success in study and work, which will have an important impact on their life. If you lack concentration, it will lead to physical and mental imbalance of your child.
Lack of concentration will cause children to fail to complete structured or targeted activities, such as taking care of themselves, doing housework and doing homework.
When my child first entered the park at the age of two and a half, he cried because he couldn't button his buttons and was afraid that other students would laugh.
Later, the teacher patiently taught the child, and the school environment also provided a button hanger (a Montessori teaching aid) for him to practice buttoning. Seeing the photos sent by the teacher who studied in kindergarten, he was really focused during the practice!
After a period of time, he can not only button himself, but also help the new children button. The result of concentration is to make his original psychological hole of fear and inferiority disappear and replace it with confidence and pride.
If children are inattentive, can't keep up with the teacher's rhythm, and always have a little knowledge, they can't keep up with the progress of learning. Children can't find fun in the process of learning and give up easily.
Children with poor attention are often considered "not smart and don't study hard." This denies children's own ability to some extent, which leads to a vicious circle in which children's interest in learning is greatly reduced.
Children with poor concentration will be easily influenced by little things, it is difficult to restrain themselves from concentrating on their work, and their self-discipline is poor. If we can't respect the school and social order for a long time, Xiong Haizi needs more and greater challenges to adapt to social and collective life when he grows up, and he is also prone to psychological problems.
0 ~ 6 years old, the cultivation of concentration is to lay the foundation for children to become active thinkers in the future. As parents, we can create an environment to help children achieve "flow state" and have higher concentration.
Have you ever had such an experience: reading an interesting book, the plot in the book is ups and downs and fascinating, so that after a long time, it is dark without being noticed. This kind of super ecstasy and super concentration is the "flow state".
1. "Flow state" is the best concentration experience and excellent spiritual enjoyment.
The word "flow" was first put forward by the famous positive psychologist Mihaly Chiker Sen, who thought:
I have had many experiences working with children aged 0 ~ 3, and I was deeply impressed by a two-year-old girl named Tian Tian. That day, she had a Montessori operation at school.
The so-called pasting work is to dip some cut pieces of paper (triangle, circle, etc.). ) Use a small brush in the glue, paste them on another small card, and finally press them with a special cloth to remove the excess glue.
During the whole pasting process, Tian Tian was very attentive, pasting one small card after another, one ***8 cards, until all the cards were used up.
She was so absorbed in her work that she didn't even bother to wipe the little sweat on her forehead. After reading the small card, she smiled with relief and trotted to me with the card: Teacher, look! I sent it!
This kind of selfless concentration, accompanied by excitement, happiness and enrichment, is the state of flow.
2. Creating an orderly environment is conducive to better concentration and promoting the generation of flow state.
We can help children to achieve a highly concentrated flow state more easily by creating an environment. We adults have an experience: it is not easy to concentrate in a noisy environment, but in a quiet coffee shop or book bar, we can concentrate on reading a book for an hour or more at once.
The gap lies in the orderly environment that does not interfere with concentration.
When my child was two years old, he especially liked to play with tall building blocks. But because of the large number of building blocks, it is often a gap between a floor and a sofa. Sometimes I can't find the building blocks I want, and I feel anxious to cry, and my concentration time is particularly short.
Later, I adjusted a method: I just provided a special "work mat" for children, and children can concentrate on playing with building blocks for nearly 1 hour!
The ideal work pad should be plain. If the colors are bright and there are even many cartoon images, it will distract children's attention. Every time children play with tall building blocks, I will say to them: Let's find a home for the building blocks! Let the children gather all the building blocks to be used on the mat.
When our eyes are effectively focused on the mat, our efficiency will be improved and our spirit will be more focused. When we complete a "castle" in our hearts, our children will also feel heartfelt pleasure! Forget my state of concentration, and it will be fine naturally.
3. Grasp the golden ratio of challenges and skills to make learning more focused and interesting.
In order to achieve the highest concentration, the difficulty coefficient should match one's own ability, and so should children's learning. This means that we should be good at observing children, understand their ability level and provide them with relatively difficult things to do. This has many similarities with Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development.
Just like when we play a game, when we are novices, our ability is relatively low and our technology is not skilled, so it is difficult to set the level of the game. In this way, ability and challenge are the golden ratio, and it is easy for us to find it interesting and want to continue playing.
With our constant practice, our ability has improved. If the challenge remains the same, many people will find it boring. And if the difficulty coefficient doubles at once, you will feel pressure and anxiety, which will lead to giving up learning.
Therefore, we can say that the best state of learning is a state that exceeds the current ability level of children. In this interval, we are most likely to achieve the state of focusing on flow.
4. Cultivating children's sense of consciousness and control will generate a steady stream of flow and have super high concentration.
Regarding the cultivation and protection of children's concentration, Dr. Montessori once pointed out:
Simply put, it is to create an environment where children have something to do, and an environment where children feel that they can control things.
A. "Please help me, let me do it myself!" Independent children have more sense of control and are more likely to achieve selfless concentration.
Concentration is an inner spiritual strength. When my child 1 year old, he just learned to walk a few steps. I provided my child with a stroller, and as a result, he spent almost a whole day practicing how to move himself with the help of a stroller!
The child has completely achieved selfless concentration, which is not taught by others, but his inner self-drive. He fully enjoys the feeling of controlling himself and the present. In the process of practicing toddler, he gradually learned how to balance his body with his own strength and move towards another brand-new independent milestone.
B. Help children realize their emotions and state, and they will correct themselves and reach a state of concentration.
Unless a person learns to control his thoughts and feelings, he can't achieve a state of concentration, let alone become a complete person. If you can help children perceive their emotions and state, it is to help them cultivate their concentration.
Once, the child tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle several times, but the last few pieces could not be put in. His mouth was like a soy sauce bottle and he lost his temper. I gently walked over and said:
-"You feel a little angry. You've tried many ways. Why can't you put it in? " (Help children perceive their emotions)
-"let mom try!" (Show the children)
After I demonstrated several times, the child took the puzzle and began to concentrate on putting it back together. I found that children have been making mistakes, and we don't need to point them out in particular. After one or two observations and demonstrations by adults, he can correct himself until they think it is perfect.
In this process, the children's attention naturally focused together, body and mind integrated, efficient operation, and felt extremely happy and confident inside.
Sleep contributes to children's good physical and mental development, and it is also an important cornerstone for children's concentration development. Parents have the responsibility to plan their children's sleep time and help them develop good sleep habits.
We can evaluate whether children can effectively calm themselves down according to their age. Here are some good ways to help children get a good sleep:
1. Try the "bedtime ceremony" to cultivate an exclusive child. It can be taking a shower, reading a story and changing into soft pajamas. These ceremonies can give children a positive psychological hint: I'm going to bed!
2. Dim the lights and close the curtains 30 minutes before going to bed. Dim light will deepen children's secretion of melatonin, and reducing interference can help children fall asleep faster.
3. Increase the amount of exercise during the day and avoid taking a long nap. If children sleep too long and don't have enough exercise during the day, it will inevitably affect their sleep at night. If they are trapped in a certain situation, it will become an disgusting cycle. Proper control of children's sleep time during the day can make children fall asleep more easily at night.
Try to be an active observer when we accompany our children! Being positive means not to interfere too much with children's games; Being positive means that we don't answer the phone; Being positive means that we will not replace our children's ideas with our own; Being positive means giving timely help and demonstration to children when they encounter real difficulties.
1. Voluntary choice is the perpetual motion machine for the formation of children's concentration.
In the process of playing games with children, if we watch carefully, they will tell us what they want to do and how to do it. When the game is initiated by children themselves, they will have more concentration and willingness. They are loyal to their hearts and choices and fully enjoy them.
2. Not disturbing means a higher stage of guidance, which is helpful to the all-round development of children's concentration and problem-solving ability.
Governing by doing nothing is a higher level of parents' realm. Being with children, but not doing much, requires adults to have more keen observation and self-control. However, this way will produce a child who can concentrate more easily and find a solution to the problem. Every time we give our child unnecessary help, we deprive him of the opportunity to grow up.
Montessori said that concentration is the unity of body and mind. It allows us to immerse ourselves in one thing wholeheartedly without external interference.
When children can concentrate on one thing, their needs are met. Children will focus on what they can accomplish and control, not what they can't control.
To cultivate children's concentration, parents need to help their children understand themselves. We also need to create an environment to help children get rid of unnecessary interference. We need to try to control ourselves, don't do unnecessary help, and don't let ourselves become a stumbling block to shaping children's concentration. When children follow their own hearts, they will feel the beauty of concentration. They will understand how happy it is to be able to concentrate on one thing!