Promoting attentiveness !

A bird can be seen perched hidden and quiet for several minutes. Their instinct is to fly. But they balance it with still periods. 

Often parents raise a question as to how to sustain the attention of a pre-school child!

Most pre-school children grow up in a distracted home environment. In the earlier years when I grew up, most homes did not have a TV or a land phone. Today, the natural traction is towards the TV viewing in most homes, whenever there is free time. Each adult member of the family would have a mobile phone. The telephone conversations draw the attention of pre-school children. The homes run according to the rhythm of adults. It is only in few homes, I noticed a deliberate plan to make the environment child friendly when children are awake. 

We enhance the attention of pre-school children by engaging them to focus on activities which are good for promoting their understanding, interest, observational skills and interaction. 

Most pre-school children hold their attention, when they are involved in doing some paper craft, like drawing, colouring or make a scrap book; when they are read to from a picture book, when sung to along with their participation in actions, during narration of events in which they participated, or playing with toys to promote imagination and make-believe concepts....! These habits are to be regular and a few times during the day for the child to have a focus on what would generate an interest to hold his attention. 

Attention is a cognitive function. It is when a child is able to process a visual or auditory information, a child gives his attention by choice. 

Many parents who introduce the pre-school child to TV viewing is making a child passive by seeing the entertainment on the TV screen, which involves only transient attention on any scene as each scene is moving fast. We reduce them to be ultra short in attention by introducing them to visual screen in the TV or mobile phone in early childhood. 

Instead if we promote interactive play and promote observational and narrative skills, we promote the loop of comprehension- seeing, hearing, doing, feeling, processing, understanding, memory and recollection! This form of integrative learning does not take place unless parents and a pre-school child engage in joint activities of interest to children!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)