How To Improve Your Child’s Focus And Concentration

One of the things that have become a big deal in parenting a child in the 21st century is Focus. Now we are seeing children who are struggling to concentrate, children whose attention span have become even a lot shorter. I was reading a research recently and it says that the attention span for teenagers have gone down to a few seconds per time, because of excessive exposure to screen and a lot of other distractions.

Studies have shown that smartphones not only remove focus but also disturb the way the brain is developing. Right now we are having children who were born with smartphones under their armpits, they are digital nomads. These children come into the space and they do not even understand what it means not to have internet. They do not understand what it means not to have a smartphone. We learned it but they are digital nomads, we were here when the smartphone came in and unfortunately nobody taught us how to parent the smartphone generation.

Which is the biggest challenge of this century. This is that we do not even understand how to navigate, how to balance the training between the children born in this time and what it is that we have. This is why parenting education is no longer negotiable. Our parents transitioned into the times, there were no major changes, there were no major hits. But right now, we are not just a transitioning into the time, the times have changed, you must always put this in perspective in your parenting.

So the question remains; how do we evolve this education for these digital nomads?

How do we help them create more focus? I was teaching the parents in our inner circle program and I said to them, that if you do not build focus and concentration in your children we are going to get to a point where they would need to pay heavily to manage distractions in their children. I am a distraction manager, so there is something called distraction management, I know families that I work with, and the major challenge that they have is focused on concentration.

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When we talk about concentration, it says that the average four to five-year-old can focus on task two to five minutes times their age. Can you do the math?

If you have a five-year-old, the average focus for that five-year-old is two to five minutes times their age. So your five years old is supposed to have at least two minutes. if we calculate on based on two minutes, that\’s at least a ten minutes focus attention span. Right now as we speak, we do not even have toddlers focusing more than a minute. So we are talking about 10 minutes originally put together, but we do not even have children who can focus anymore.
How many of us are noticing that this is a challenge?
How many of us are taking out time to help our children build focus?
How many of us are taking out time to help our children build concentration?

When you come into the academy, one of the first things that I tell you is that the things that your children need to learn to thrive are not on the screen. I was analyzing something recently, about the world tech gurus. The world tech gurus didn\’t become the world tech gurus because they were exposed to screen, they became the world tech gurus because they could think. One way parents justify excessive screen time is by saying they saying that they want their child to be tech-savvy.

I was listening to a documentary on the Japanese children and I listened to how they were grouped from zero to seven and in all of those ages zero to seven, they tried not to introduce the screen. Also, these children do not start formal school until they are about six or seven years of. By the time they now take them to the classroom, boom they are like machines. They teach them manners first, they teach them how to think first before they take them to the tech world. Unfortunately what we are doing now is the reverse. So we are now teaching our children how to be in the tech world without the basics that they need. Very interesting turn and that is why places like Japan, Chinese are leading the world tech system.

Mark Zuckerberg ,Bill Gate and all of the tech giants in Silicon Valley didn\’t become the world giants because they were techier than others, they became the world tech giants because they could think, they were better thinker. So focus functions as a gateway to higher functioning skills.

A child cannot assess higher forms of learning especially memory, because memory is what leads to deeper comprehension. Without the ability to pay attention to something, children are not going to be able to process information, they will not be able to consolidate into this memory and this means that they will not be able to interpret, comprehend, analyze, criticize and synthesize information.

How To You Help Your Children Learn Focus?

1. Teach your children to think: Many of the times a child does something and you are very quick to jump in into correction, you are teaching your child how not to think. Mistakes are one of the biggest tools to use in parenting. You see those mistakes that you are angry that it is happening, they are one of the most profound tools that you need in parenting today. So if your child makes a mistake and you understand that you need to teach your children how to think, you will get to a point where you are giving room for your children to think.o

2. Teach your children how to deal with distractions.

Many of the times, what we do is that we teach our children not to be distracted but we do not teach them how to deal with distraction. Distraction will never go away. You cannot eliminate distraction no matter. Beyond eliminating distractions, you need to teach your children how to deal with distractions. Distraction is never going to go away completely. We need to teach them how to refocus as soon as they are distracted.Help your children practice mindfulness, when you get distracted, how do you put yourself back to start again?

3. You need to understand your child\’s learning style. In helping your child improve concentration, you will need to understand how your child learns. When I started parenting, I struggled with this. I have a set of twins, my daughter started reading as early as four but my son was struggling, and I didn\’t know that I was probably teaching my children with my learning style. If you cannot understand how a child learns, you cannot teach them how to focus and how to manage distraction, and also how to put the concentration in. We have been able to help him to improve his auditory learning style, his visual learning style since he is a dominant aesthetic learner.

“In helping your child improve concentration, you will need to understand how your child learns.“

We have a lot of children that we call olodo. For a lot of those of you who are Nigerians, olodo is a Nigerian term used to describe a dumb child, and many of the times, I have found that it is not the child\’s fault, it is actually that we do not understand how this child learns, so we are constantly struggling on how we can teach this child. This is why we have the course understanding your child\’s learning style in the academy, where you can learn and understand how your child learns. Now one of the things that this helped me do was that it did not only help me with his learning, right now he\’s a star in school but it helped me also to manage misbehaviors. I got to understand that discipline is teaching but we are constantly struggling because we are not teaching. So when you understand that it\’s teaching, then you need to understand who you are parenting.

Join the learning style course here and enjoy a whopping discount of over 50%. Click HERE to join.

4. Let your children read. Reading has been found as a way to teach your children how to focus and concentrate. Let them read big texts, large words. As soon as the twins turned 10, we started introducing them to reading a 400 pager book on purpose. It is going to build a lot of concentration. Now if your child hasn\’t started reading at all, read to them. The more you can read to your child, the more your child can see it and retain it. If your child has started reading, please create a system where your children are constantly reading, it is going to help build a lot of focus. So when we are talking about focus. We are talking about how it can help your child put a lot in perspective. If you do not build it as a skill, when your children are young, they will continue to struggle with it even as adults.

5. Teach your children how to boost brainpower.

How do I teach my children to boost brain power you ask? The kind of games your children play, Puzzles, crosswords can help boost their brainpower. If your children play a game that lets them think, your children are going to be better positioned to focus. If your child is not very good with focus, the first thing you get is a building block, a tiny lego piece. I am talking about from like 7, 8 of age your child is going to feel very frustrated because it takes a lot of focus.
Do not worry about what is happening when this is happening, do not worry when the child is throwing a tantrum and all of that. You need to gradually build this focus one step at a time. So even when you have toddlers, who go to play on a playground, get them to name the shapes that they see on the floor. it is a way to build focus.
When it comes to every child, every child is uniquely different. So because every child is uniquely different that is why you will need to understand who your child is, how your child learns and what personality your child is. It helps you parents better with peace and calm.

Starting from the 28th of March 2022, we\’ll be taking hundreds of parents on this journey of discovering how their children learn and strategies on they can accelerate their learning.

Do you know how your child learns? Do you want to know? You can join our upcoming class on Understanding your child\’s learning style.

To register for the Learning Style Course:
Pay #8,000 to 0509494057 (GT Bank) The Intentional Parent Academy. Send proof of payment through WhatsApp chat to 08129687040.Or you can join online via this link. https://selar.co/Learningstylecourse

On the 10th of March my birthday, the first early bird will end and you pay more. You will also have access anytime to the course as you enroll because this course will happen on our online academy: Parents who have ever taken this course always say \” this is a course they wish they took a long time ago\”.

https://anchor.fm/wendyologe/episodes/Episode-12–Emotional-Intelligence–the-real-deal-e1evqf4