Paying attention. What it is?
Humans are capable of doing many things. Paying attention is one of the factors that help us learn crucial things. When someone is paying attention to something, he will not focus on other things. When the teacher is talking in the school, the students should listen to the teacher. If there is an issue in paying attention to the teacher, students will not learn. It is perfect for the child to pay attention using eyesight and hearing. Our surrounding has a lot of information. Without the focus on one thing, the child will remain distracted. Paying attention is an essential part of child development and human existence.
Attention difficulties
Children under the spectrum cannot focus on one thing for a long time. It will take some time to learn the skill of paying attention. During childhood, most children suffer from attention difficulties. There are many aspects of these difficulties. In autism, it is hard for the children to focus on one thing. There are always other things going around in the environment. We expect them to ignore these distractions and focus on school learning. They cannot focus only on learning when they are hungry. If there is a bright light in the area, they will start focusing on the bright light rather than the classroom.
Some children have a high level of attention difficulties like in the case of autism. You cannot force time to focus on anything except the things they like. If the child loves cars, you may give him some cars to play with to make him busy for many hours. All the other things may not grab the attention of children under the spectrum. It is hard to teach these children as you have to arrange the learning program according to the specific needs of the child. You cannot use this technique in the classroom as all the other children may not like cars. Some children main focus on an object using visual sense and forget about the hearing. These children may look attentive but their mind is struggling to come out of some stories in the brain. You have to arrange different strategies to grab their attention.
Strategies
If your child is not paying attention to anything, it is essential to adopt some advanced strategies to get rid of the problem. We have compiled a guide to solve the attention difficulties related issues for your child.
Select the right environment
In the first step, you have to choose a special place to teach your children. Children cannot focus on anything if there are distractions in the environment. You can also discuss with your child the place we want to choose for learning. A location where family members are not visiting all the time is better. There should be no other distractions like smartphones. It is better to learn in the same environment every day as the child knows how to handle the distractions.
Choose interesting activities
It is hard for the child to pay attention or anything if he is not interested. It is essential to choose activities according to the level of your child. Younger kids can do small activities like adding a bead to the necklace. You have to define the goals of the activities. Once the activity is complete, you should praise the children for their success. For older children, you can choose some hard tasks like baking a cake.
Release energy
A child cannot focus on anything if he has a high level of energy in the body. It is essential to release extra energy to pay attention. According to scientific studies, releasing energy enhances memory. It is crucial to let your children play for some time to decrease their energy levels. If he jumps on the trampoline or plays in the swimming pool for some time before starting the homework, there are more chances of completing the task.
Give effective instructions
Most teachers and parents complain that their children do not follow the instructions. It is due to a lack of effective instructions. It is essential to use fewer words when instructing the child. It is better to repeat the instruction many times to help the children pay more attention to it. It will become easy when you break the instructions into many steps. If you want your child to throw the ball, you should ask him to pick the ball and throw the ball separately.
1 comment
Great ideas. I teach PreK children with Autism. They are just beginning to attend to non preferred tasks. Sometimes it’s difficult to get their attention. Please send more strategies to help me gain their attention during my instructional day.
Thank you.
Teri
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