How to Help Your Child Pay Attention

Capturing your child’s attention can be a challenging task for any parent, especially in a world where there are so many tempting distractions like television, video games, computers, and tablets out in the world (not to mention simpler distractions like friends). At Eaton Arrowsmith, we work closely with children who have additional struggles with attention, such as ADHD, so we’d like to share a few of our strategies to help your child focus.

One of the easiest ways to prevent distraction is to declutter your learning environment. Before you begin working on a lesson or homework project, clear your learning area of unnecessary papers, pictures, or other paraphernalia. Tuck pens and pencils away in a drawer. Move stacks of paper to a file cabinet. Turn off your cell phone and television - even better, leave those distractions in another room. This will help your child’s attention stick to what is directly in front of them, rather than wandering about the room.

Another effective strategy is to make sure your child gets enough physical activity, both before studying and throughout the day - there is a good reason for recess periods! Any child will become distracted with too much pent-up energy, and those with learning disabilities will become distracted even faster. Make sure to encourage your child to run, romp, and get their heart rate up before starting a study session, and break up study time with aerobic play. The time spent learning will be more focused and more effective.

Finally, try and study with your child, pair them with a reliable study buddy, or have a teacher available to them (whether online or in person). Many children (and even adults) with learning disabilities find it difficult to study and stay focused in a totally isolated environment. Simply reading next to someone else who is also reading can help them stay on task.

By creating a distraction-free environment, providing time for aerobic exercise, and modeling good study habits with a teacher or study buddy, you can drastically improve your child’s ability to pay attention. They will not only be able to pay attention for long periods of time, but they will also be able to focus more deeply and retain more information than before.