Identifying and solving problems. The child cannot concentrate: problem solving

Good morning. Svetlana, your son is a product and result of your family upbringing, which you do not like about doing your homework)). Svetlana, let me give you some recommendations based on my extensive experience in child-parent psychotherapy. At a minimum you need:
1. Find the reasons for the child’s behavior when doing homework. For example, if a boy had problems concentrating, then the child would immediately have serious learning problems, and you did not write anything about them. Therefore, the problem is different.
2. In order to eliminate the problem of overwork at school, develop a new ritual for doing homework, for example: after school the child should eat, rest (change type of activity), play, take a walk or sleep (no more than 20 minutes), etc.
3. Pay attention to the important signal that your child gives to you, the parents, namely, his lack of extracurricular interests, hobbies and hobbies. You did not describe a single extracurricular hobby of your child, or how you spend family leisure time (for example, you want to go to the skating rink with the whole family, etc.). The presence of extracurricular interests, hobbies and hobbies in a child allows the child to include self-motivation, self-discipline, responsibility, etc., that is, those personal qualities from the absence of which you, the parents, suffer greatly.
4. Begin to develop in the child such new, important personal qualities as independence, responsibility, discipline, perseverance and perseverance, cognitive interest, etc. Agree, it is unfair to demand from your son what you yourself have not taught him.
5. Change your usual patterns of behavior and methods of interaction with your child, including during homework, for example: learn to negotiate with your child, remember your sense of humor and self-irony - this will allow you, at a minimum, not to dramatize the situation with doing homework assignments, easy to resolve emerging issues, etc.
6. Introduce cognitive motives for learning activities for the child when doing homework, for example, use elements of motivation from well-known, quite interesting and effective teaching technologies, for example, the project method, etc.
7. In order not to guess about the reason, show the child again to a professional child psychologist, at least online, who, after one conversation with you and the child:
*will determine the root cause of your problem;
*determine a competent strategy for psychological assistance to the child,
*will give you, the parents, specific recommendations for interacting with your child in solving the problem, some of which are described above,
*and will never tell you " you have a wonderful child, what do you want"
Wisdom to you.
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Many parents note that their children may have difficulty focusing on one subject. In such cases, psychologists and teachers advise taking action immediately. The inability to concentrate results in falling behind in subjects at school. If a child cannot concentrate, then it is difficult for him to learn new concepts. This is a big obstacle to development. Recommendations from experts will help you overcome the problem.

The ability to concentrate - what is it?

This concept implies prolonged concentration of attention on a specific object. Intentional concentration is a difficult task that even adults sometimes cannot cope with. As for children, it is even more difficult for them to fully concentrate on one subject. However, this quality is simply necessary for successful learning, so it must be developed.

If your child is 5 years old, then he should be able to fix his attention on an object for about 8 minutes. Some children at this age are able to concentrate for 20 minutes. To find out this indicator for an older child, you need to multiply each year by 5 minutes. But much depends on the specific situation and the child’s character traits.

Factors that affect the ability to concentrate:

Having a strong interest in the subject;
presence of interference;
time of day;

If a child is not interested, then his attention will “jump” from one subject to another. This leads to lag in studies and loss of time. Any student would prefer to watch an interesting program on TV rather than read a boring textbook.

Main reasons for lack of concentration

1. After observing your child, you can make sure that while doing an interesting activity, he concentrates his attention for quite a long time. Getting carried away, children forget about lunch, a walk and other things to do. However, when it comes to routine lessons, they cannot concentrate. This is the main reason for the lack of attention. If a child does not see the benefit for himself in a certain activity, then he lacks incentives. In this case, parents need to create these incentives. Analyze the situation and come up with a good reason that can “stimulate” children’s interest. If the child is still small, then it is better to turn any training into an exciting game. Then he himself will not notice that the lesson has become interesting for him. When teaching your child to read and write, you can write letters not in a notebook, but on the asphalt or on a blackboard. Letters can be sculpted from adze or plasticine, drawn with crayons, paints, etc. Small children are not attracted to copybooks. But they immediately become interested in writing letters during games and walks.

2. If a child does not feel well, he will not be able to concentrate his attention in class. As a result of fatigue, physical illness or overwork, performance is significantly reduced. Therefore, an important task for parents is to create an optimal learning schedule. The child should not be overloaded. If you notice that your baby is tired, he needs to take a break. When studying at home, you need to pause for 10 minutes between classes. Let your child do physical exercises during this time. However, too much activity leads to children taking a long time to calm down after a pause. This should also be avoided.

3. If a child is upset about something, then he will also not be able to study. An offended or upset person constantly replays the situation in his head. A heart-to-heart conversation will help you get rid of negativity. Help your child vent any pent-up resentment or irritation. Only after this will he come to his senses and be ready to concentrate. Very often, young children cannot study when they are waiting for some pleasant events. If you promised to take him to the circus or zoo, he is probably fantasizing. In this case, psychologists advise replaying the scene. Let him imagine what he wants and tell you about it. This will help the child express his emotions. Then he will be ready for productive activities.

Question from Oksana, St. Petersburg:

The child appears normal. Before school we worked with a defectologist and speech therapist, but at school we had problems with the Russian language and mathematics. The main thing is that he doesn’t seem to be present in the lesson. He came, sat and left. Sometimes he doesn’t remember what happened in the lesson and says that he is not interested. Not focused, hence the problems, failures, and hence the mother’s scream. Hence the child’s complexes. What to do?

Lyubov Shalyuga, doctor, answers:

Hello, Oksana!

The issues of effective education and child development worry many parents, especially in our time when competitiveness in the labor market is high. Therefore, everyone tries to stimulate the child to learn in every way known to him. These methods are not always effective, and sometimes even have a negative impact on the child’s development and his further adaptation in life. For example, if a child is inattentive, sometimes you just want to shout at him, but as a result he withdraws even more and loses concentration. Why is this happening?

According to System-Vector Psychology by Yuri Burlan, there are eight variants of the structure of the human psyche (vectors), differing in properties given from birth. The owners of these vectors are distinguished by their interests, innate abilities and talents. To reveal their full potential, a representative of each vector needs its own conditions, optimal for it. Therefore, each of them needs its own individual approach.

This is especially important and relevant in relation to children, because their mental properties go through a period of development until the age of 15-16 years. And the conditions during this period precisely determine what level of development his innate abilities will reach, which will later be realized for the benefit of society.

The situation you described, when the child seems not to be present in the lesson and cannot concentrate, is often encountered by the child’s parents with a sound vector.

These children, by their nature, have particularly sensitive hearing. Loud sounds, as well as words with a negative meaning, hurt them so much that, upon hearing them, the child defends himself and literally “withdraws into himself,” abstracts himself from everything that is happening around him.

You can notice: when noise and uproar begin in the classroom, the ability to perceive material in a child with a sound vector drops sharply. As a result, he cannot remember any of the material that was discussed in such conditions. Potential geniuses, little sound engineers are capable of solving complex problems in their heads. All they need is an interesting task and favorable conditions.

Create conditions

First of all, this is the good condition of the mother. After all, it is the mother who determines how the child feels this world - pleasant and safe, or threatening. from the mother provides the basic foundation for the development of the baby.

The second condition is silence. Knowing about the child’s increased sensitivity to sound stimuli allows you to create conditions for comfortable completion of homework. He also needs quiet at home so that he can concentrate on the material he is studying. Some problems of teaching a child are discussed in the article: "".

If you are oriented in the innate vectorial characteristics of your child, you will always be able to understand the reasons for certain characteristics of his behavior, which means you will not have a reason to yell at him. After all, screaming has the most detrimental effect on a child’s psyche, especially when it comes to the sound vector. You can read more about this in the articles: “”, “Mom, don’t sing so loud. Take care of the ears of a genius."

It is important to be able to correctly understand the properties of your child in order to create optimal conditions for his development, and therefore contribute to his better realization in adulthood. Read how it works

1. Focus on your studies and make getting an education a priority in your life.

One of the unique features of the brain is that its energy can be easily focused on what seems important to a person. If all your actions are guided by the priority of learning, then you will achieve concentration much easier, since the brain will automatically attract it to learning. Your future depends on the knowledge and skills acquired as a student. Only you benefit from the education you receive. Therefore, give priority to education in your life by making a list of the benefits it brings and remembering them well.

The most important advantage is that education makes all aspects of life complete: spiritual, financial, career, as well as personal, related to health and love.

2. Get rid of external stimuli that interfere with concentration.

The brain is designed to process all information that reaches the senses. Thanks to this, we learn about possible danger.

Don’t blame yourself for being distracted by the circumstances around you and unable to concentrate on your studies, but simply try to remove everything that bothers you. Here's what you can do about it.

Ask your family to help you concentrate on your studies.
+ Ask them to turn off (or dim) noise sources (TV, radio, etc.) during your activities.
+ If the sound still bothers you, use earplugs or headphones. Naturally, the latter should not have music!
+ Keep books and other items of interest outside your room.
+ Turn off your mobile phone and close the door to your room.

3. Get rid of the worst enemies of concentration - extraneous thoughts. After you have closed the doors, turned off the TV and radio and put earplugs in your ears, other stimuli - thoughts - arise inside your brain.

Even when you open a book and stare at it, you find yourself thinking about completely different things! It is completely natural that different thoughts are swarming in your head. This phenomenon is common to all people.

How to solve this problem? One thing is clear: there is no point in fighting thoughts. When you start fighting a thought, you transfer more energy to it and it becomes more intrusive.

Instead of resisting, simply state:

For the next 2 hours I will only think about chemistry classes, and I will think about the rest later!

By repeating this setup, you will gradually be able to concentrate on your studies. At first, annoying thoughts will not want to leave you. Just ignore them and continue your studies. Then they will stop bothering you and demanding your attention!

4. Use simple concentration techniques in class or at home and learn a lot of material with little effort.

Sit comfortably during class.
+ Take a deep breath every 10 minutes.
+ Mentally ask questions about the topic while listening to a lecture or studying material to attract the brain's attention to the topic of the lesson.

Questions during the lesson force you to be vigilant. This is explained by a feature of the brain: the moment it hears a question, it enters the search stage and remains in it until it finds the answer or you ask the next question.

The moment you ask a question and concentrate your attention 100% on the material being studied, extraneous thoughts leave you. Plus, whatever subject you study, you will understand it better. Keep asking questions for 3-4 weeks and you will get into the habit of focusing your full attention whenever you want.

5. Recharge your body with energy: before starting classes and during breaks, take 3-4 deep breaths and stretch your body.

Your body is made up of trillions of living cells. They need a constant supply of nutrients and frequent rest so that they can function better and serve you effectively.

Necessary nutrients are supplied throughout the body through proper blood circulation.

When you change your position or relieve tension, the cells have time to rest and are slightly recharged with energy.

This is very important, otherwise even the simplest activities may turn out to be difficult work for you. Here's what you need to do to help your body.

Stretch like a cat. Stretching relaxes the body, improves blood circulation and reduces stress on the brain.
+ Take 3-4 slow, deep breaths before and after exercise to provide oxygen to your brain.
+ When in class or at home, sit comfortably so that no part of your body feels tense.

6. Use specific statements to help you concentrate for a long time.

You can concentrate on studying a topic and stay focused for a long time with the help of the following specific statements. + “I can concentrate at will. I like to do one thing at a time.” + “Study is my priority.

Because the classes will help me gain important knowledge to start my career.”

+ “For the next two hours I'm going to focus on studying physics (or another subject). I love physics. She is useful and interesting."

Each affirmation targets positive thoughts, which automatically increase the power of your attention and make you think and act like a high-performing student! Let this become your habit. And to do this, repeat all statements 3 times before starting classes.

7. Pay close attention to every activity, even eating or watching TV series!

Like any skill, concentration develops through practice.

Believe it or not, you already know how to concentrate 100%.

Surprised? What do you think about when you watch a funny television series, watch a brutal battle between a hero and a villain in a computer game, or read an adventure book? Yes, in such situations you are so focused that you don't think about anything else. This is precisely 100% concentration of attention. So, it has been proven that you already have the ability to fully concentrate your attention in certain conditions.

Now you just have to transfer this skill to other circumstances - to a lecture in class, to study at home, to follow the flow of a conversation, etc.

In fact, it can be used daily as a workout. For example, when your friend begins to tell you something, mentally say to yourself: “I will fully concentrate on what my friend is saying.” And then try your best not to miss a single word.

8. Train the ability to stay in only one lesson in the allotted time.

This is a simple and at the same time effective method of increasing attention. With its help, you can train yourself to do what you want and concentrate on it for a long time.

By developing this ability, you will acquire a useful habit. Can you imagine her strength? All the beautiful things around you are the result of the focused consciousness of some people. You, too, can develop this ability in yourself by training your consciousness.

Here are two simple exercises to practice.

Listen to the sound of musical instruments. Sit quietly and close your eyes. Imagine that you are listening to a violin, flute or other musical instrument. Choose only one instrument in the allotted time and imagine its sound for two minutes. Then choose another tool. Perform math operations orally. Close your eyes and multiply the numbers verbally. Start with two-digit numbers and then move on to more complex numbers.

9. Never say that you cannot concentrate - this reinforces your inability to concentrate. Instead, say: “I can concentrate on any subject for any length of time.”

Repetitive thoughts and actions become habits. Many of us have repeatedly enjoyed the following negative thoughts.

+ “I can’t fully concentrate.”
+ “It takes years of practice to learn to fully concentrate for even a minute.” Repeating such thoughts creates the belief that learning attention is very difficult. But you know that practice and training can improve any ability.

Here's another way to quickly improve your attention. Whenever you feel like you are concentrating better, immediately reinforce your ability with the following affirmations.

+ “My ability to concentrate is improving.”
+ “Day after day, I am able to maintain my attention better and longer.”

10. Develop the habit of studying on a schedule to improve your concentration.

By studying on schedule, you feel calm and confident that you will have time to cover all the material before the exams. And the feeling of calm helps to better concentrate during classes, because there is no tension.

Make it your policy to study on a schedule. You may already be using some semblance of a schedule. Once you create a schedule, use it regularly to reap all of the following benefits.

Concentrating during classes.
+ Life without stress.
+ Enough time to develop the skills you need to live a better life.

This habit is worth its weight in gold.

The problem of children's inattention is most often faced by parents whose children have started systematic schooling. And this is quite understandable, since educational activity requires from the child new, higher forms of voluntary behavior, the ability to control his mental processes, including attention.
As a rule, parents are well aware that good attention is one of the most important conditions for successful learning. That is why among parental instructions at the beginning of the school day you can most often hear: “Be careful! Don't get distracted at school! Get together in class! Listen well to the teacher!”
For low-performing schoolchildren, such calls are becoming quite common. However, if a child really has problems with the development of attention, demands to “be more attentive” alone will not do.

DIFFERENT REASONS

First, parents need to understand possible reasons oh the lack of attention of the student. Let's list the most common ones.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Children with a similar diagnosis are characterized by excessive motor activity, impulsiveness, poor concentration, and high distractibility. Difficulties in organizing their behavior and maintaining attention, as a rule, are clearly revealed long before entering school. The school situation only aggravates their problems. Parents of such children are required to have extreme patience and consistency in their relationship with the child. They must carry out their educational practice in close contact with doctors, teachers and psychologists, since children with attention deficit disorder need special comprehensive correctional and developmental work.

Chronic somatic diseases, sickness of the child. Children with poor health are characterized by high fatigue and low performance. The reduced function of their attention may be due to a general weakening of the body. Such children require obligatory adherence to the regime, dosing of loads, rest (daytime sleep is desirable). If these conditions are met, which reduce the influence of physical and physiological restrictions, such children can have good attention.

Individual characteristics of the nervous system. The properties of higher nervous activity influence the development of all properties of attention: for students with a strong and mobile nervous system, stable, well-switched and distributed attention is more typical. Students with an inert and weak nervous system are more likely to have unstable, poorly switched and distributed attention. Knowing the basic features of the child’s nervous system, parents can help him develop such qualities and skills of attention that can be trained: skills of maintaining attention, switching it and distributing it.

Fatigue and overload. The life of a modern child is filled with many responsibilities. Typically, a schoolchild’s working day is not limited to the actual academic classes, but includes visits to various clubs, sections, studios, etc. (and not all of them are attended by the child of his own free will). Often, a student’s work schedule is so tightly scheduled from morning to evening that the student barely has time to prepare his homework. This leaves virtually no time for proper rest, and children do not get enough sleep. Physical, psychological, and information overload inevitably lead to decreased performance, increased inattention and absent-mindedness in children.

Age restrictions in the development of attention. The attention of children of primary school age may not be perfect enough due to age-related characteristics of general mental development. At this age, attention is indeed still poorly organized, has a small volume, is poorly distributed and unstable. The reason for this is the insufficient maturity of the neurophysiological mechanisms that ensure attention processes and control over the performance of activities.
You probably won’t find a single primary school student in whose notebooks you don’t occasionally encounter so-called “careless” errors. During primary school education, significant changes occur in the development of attention; all its properties are intensively developed: the volume of attention increases sharply (more than 2 times), its stability increases, and switching and distribution skills develop.
By the age of 9–10, children become able to maintain and carry out an arbitrary program of actions for a sufficiently long time. It is believed that primary school age is the most favorable for the targeted development of a child’s attention.

Insufficient motivation to perform activities. It is well known that even a small child can show enviable attentiveness and concentration if he is engaged in something that is very interesting to him. And if children could only do what they liked, adults would not have to worry about developing children's attention. As a rule, we talk about children's inattention when they are required to do something unattractive, not very interesting and not significant enough.
Often, academic work plays the role of an unattractive activity: a child who is inattentive during lessons at school or when doing homework assignments can pay attention to things that are not related to studies (play long enough and with concentration, watch TV, work on the computer, etc.) . In these cases, we may be talking about insufficient development of the student’s cognitive learning motivation, which ensures his full inclusion in educational activities. However, educational activities, often truly routine and monotonous, are not always capable of awakening and supporting a child’s cognitive activity on their own.
And then other, non-cognitive, motives come to help in organizing the child’s educational activity and maintaining his attention to it: a sense of duty and responsibility, the desire to get a good grade, to receive the praise of an adult or to avoid punishment, etc. In all these cases we are talking about a requirement from child's voluntary attention, i.e. orientation, concentration on the process of activity, carried out consciously, with the help of volitional effort.
Thus, increasing the student’s attentiveness is directly related to the development of his full cognitive activity and interest in intellectual activity, the development of the motivational sphere in general, as well as volitional qualities. Solving these difficult educational problems requires sufficient time and considerable effort from parents.

STAKEHOLDER PARTICIPATION

Consciously caring about the development of the child’s attention, the parent himself must be attentive to the child and show sincere interest in his activities and his life. After all, the development of attention is facilitated by the child’s involvement in any purposeful activity. As the authors of a useful book about schoolchildren’s attention, O.Yu., useful for parents, rightly point out. Ermolaev, T.M. Maryutina and T.A. Meshkova: “Few adults think about the fact that by asking a child to look for mushrooms, collect pebbles on the river bank, or choose the right pieces of a mosaic or construction set, they thereby help train attention.”
The development of a child’s attention and his ability for purposeful, organized activity is a rather lengthy process, but necessary for full mental development. In this difficult work, parents may find it useful to have some special exercises and tasks aimed at training various properties of attention.
Let's list just a few of them.

Development of concentration attention. The main type of exercises are proofreading tasks, in which the child is asked to find and cross out certain letters in printed text. Such exercises allow the child to feel what it means to “be attentive” and develop a state of internal concentration. This work should be done daily (5 minutes a day) for 2–4 months. It is also recommended to use tasks that require identifying the characteristics of objects and phenomena; exercises based on the principle of exact reproduction of any pattern (sequence of letters, numbers, geometric patterns, movements, etc.); tracing confused lines, searching for hidden figures, etc.

Increased attention span and short-term memory. The exercises are based on memorizing the number and order of a number of objects presented for looking at for a few seconds. As you master the exercise, the number of objects gradually increases.

Attention distribution training. The basic principle of the exercises: the child is asked to simultaneously perform two multidirectional tasks (for example, reading a story and counting the strokes of a pencil on the table, completing a proofreading task and listening to a record of a fairy tale, etc.). At the end of the exercise (after 5–10 minutes), the effectiveness of each task is determined.

Development of the skill of switching attention. To develop this property of attention, it is proposed, for example, to perform proofreading tasks with alternating rules for crossing out letters.

A variety of games and exercises for developing attention are widely represented in the psychological and pedagogical literature. The main condition that parents must comply with during such work is that the child’s activities must be systematic nature.

Tasks for the development of attention can be offered to children in the form of games, competitions and carried out not only at the time allotted for this, but also casually, for example, on the way to the store, on a walk, while preparing dinner, etc. The most important thing in such activities is the interest of adults, their attention to the child himself, his successes and achievements.

Elena DANILOVA,
candidate of psychological sciences,
educational psychologist at school No. 520,
Moscow

Ermolaev O.Yu., Maryutina T.M., Meshkova T.A.. Student attention. M., 1987.
Zavadenko N.N.. How to understand a child: children with hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. M., 2000.
Kikoin E.I.. Junior schoolchild: opportunities for studying and developing attention. M., 1993.
Development of creative activity of schoolchildren / Ed. A.M. Matyushkina. M., 1991.

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