My kid or teenager has a short attention span, so how can I modify our home learning environment to help her focus better?

Answer 1

One of the best things you can do--and I KNOW this will be hard--is to limit electronics in the house. Try having a basket by the door (or in the kitchen--wherever!) where you put phones. Limit phone use while in the home. Try to model this behavior yourself: don't be constantly looking at your phone all the time when it beeps/buzzes/vibrates (in fact, turn these features off). Practice sustained attention as a family. Sit together for meals without TV or other distractions (music is fine!).

Note: there's a hierarchy of the kinds of tech that you want to limit. Watching TV as a family can actually be really great (as long as it's not really violent), all things considered, because it's not as big of an attention "destroyer" as smart-phones and tablets (think: anything with an interactive screen where tasks require super short bursts of attention). Our kids are spending more and more of their time engaging in tasks and using tech that is sort of "training" their brains to have a shorter attention span. To counteract this, we have to help kids PRACTICE and exercise their attention! Remember "family movie night"? These kinds of collective activities actually require sustained attention and interaction with other people in ways that are very different from the social isolation and attention crushing nature of a lot of the activities kids engage in on their smartphones.

Most of that had to do with the home, generally. As for learning environments more specifically, you need to make sure that it isn't too BUSY, and that lessons, visual displays, etc. do not have a lot of extraneous information on them that your child may find distracting. It's important to align the amount of information you're giving your child (especially one with attention problems) with what she's capable of processing. Make it exciting & meaningful... but don't go overboard! Too much input, and LESS learning can actually take place.

Feel free to reach out if you have any follow up questions!

-Brooks

Answer 2

Minimizing noise and visual distractions is an ideal way to help concentration. Determine how your child learns. Is he/she a visual learner, for example? Do they absorb information more easily when they listen? Usually people absorb information best in two formats. Those formats may be visual and hands on. Use the methods that work and switch between them at intervals during study sessions.