chapter 7

Focus

Learning to focus is a skill that we all can develop and improve throughout our lives, but few of us receive any formal instruction or training in how to do it. For children, improving the ability to focus can make a tremendous difference in their quality of life—everything from their grades in school to their performance in a sport to their interaction with peers is impacted.

As we think about helping our children improve their focus, it’s important for us to recognize the significant difference between telling children to focus and teaching them how. When we tell our kids to pay attention, we often assume that what we are asking is reasonable, and that if they don’t do what we ask it’s because they aren’t listening. We think that a lack of attention is a behavior problem, when usually a child is doing the best he can. What kids often need is not discipline but support. As we discussed in chapter 1, the ability to focus can be strengthened with practice, and it will be strengthened more effectively and more rapidly if there is a supportive adult consistently sending the message that the child is safe, loved, and capable of success. The practices of the previous chapters will also help prepare your child to practice focusing. By helping him balance his emotions, reduce stress and anxiety, and feel more confident, the practices all make accessing the thoughtful brain a little easier and focusing a little more manageable.

Children (and many adults) naturally have wandering minds. The constant stream of thoughts, ideas, and feelings that the mind churns out combine with the stimulation of the external world to create an environment in which focusing is hard. We should expect our kids to be distracted, and they need to know that there isn’t something wrong with them because focusing is a challenge. Even adults have a hard time tuning in to one thing at a time. The important thing to learn is how to quickly notice when your mind is starting to wander and then to bring it back to the task at hand.

The Practices

The activities in this chapter offer a variety of options for giving your child something concrete to practice focusing on. The goal of each activity is for her to notice when her mind is wandering and then bring it back to the object of focus, strengthening her capacity to regain her focus in daily life.

When you start exploring these activities with your child, start with short increments of time (often even one to two minutes is a good start), and increase the time slowly, letting your child know that the time increase might be challenging. Practicing in a calm, quiet space with minimal outside distractions will help while your child is first learning these activities. As her capacity for focus increases, practicing in a space where life is happening around her will be a challenge that helps your child begin to use the tools she is learning in a real-world context.

Most meditation practices are traditionally done in a seated position. Sitting has some advantages. You can be relaxed while sitting, but you’re unlikely to fall asleep, which is a real possibility if you choose to do these activities lying down. It you are practicing Focus activities as part of a longer yoga session, the best option is usually to have your child sit upright on her yoga mat. If sitting in a cross-legged position is uncomfortable or distracting for your child, it’s no problem to use a chair.

Exploring Your Drishti

“Drishti” is a Sanskrit word that means “focal point.” During yoga practice, finding and maintaining a drishti is an important part of learning steadiness during balancing poses, and practicing finding your drishti during movement is a great preparation for the seated meditation activities that we will practice next. In this activity, we’re going to use tree pose to practice maintaining an external drishti.

1. Review tree pose in chapter 6. You are going to practice tree pose several times, changing your drishti each time while noticing how it affects the pose.
2. In the first version of tree pose, give yourself a very clear, specific place to keep your eyes focused. You can try placing an object like a small stone out on the ground in front of you, or you can put a sticker on the wall opposite your mat. Focus on your object even before you lift your foot off of the ground. Notice how your body feels with this fixed drishti, and also notice what happens if your eyes wander off of your drishti for a moment. If this happens, just see what it feels like, and then bring your eyes back to your drishti. Don’t switch legs yet.
3. In the second version of tree pose that you are going to explore, try standing in front of a window and gazing outside, balancing on the same leg as in step 2. Allow your eyes to take in the whole scene in front of you, and notice how your body feels.
4. Next, try the most challenging version of all. Practice tree pose with your eyes closed! If you feel very wobbly, just put your foot down and pick it back up again. Notice what it feels like in your body and how it affects your balance when your eyes are closed.
5. After you have tried each version of tree pose, practice on the other side. When you balance on the opposite leg, first try with your eyes closed, then looking out a window, and finally with a fixed drishti.

Follow-up: Talk with your child about his experience in each of the variations. Next time you practice tree pose, remind him about his drishti. In tree pose, when your mind starts to wander, your eyes usually do as well, and losing your balance is your body’s reminder to stay focused.

Challenges: Balancing poses are hard, even when you are focused on a drishti. Sometimes when your child feels that he is losing his balance, he might begin to hop up and down to maintain it. Encourage him instead to just put his foot down, take a breath, refocus, and start again.

Daily Practice: There are many situations in daily life when you need to find your balance, particularly if you are very active. Encourage your child to begin noticing all of the times that he would benefit from better balance—such as before a soccer game or gymnastics practice, when carrying something heavy or awkward, or even while waiting in line or sitting still for extended periods. Then ask him to experiment with finding a steady drishti during those moments. It’s likely that with practice he will discover the grounding benefits of a drishti and incorporate it into his routines.

Expanding-Energy Meditation

This meditation is a favorite for many children. When you are really focusing in on the practice, it is an exciting way to feel the energy that makes up the entire natural world (including us) right in your hands. This activity offers such a concrete way to know if your mind is wandering. As soon as you take your mind off of the meditation, you won’t be able to feel the energy in your hands!

1. Sit on your mat, with your body tall and relaxed. Take a few full breaths to settle your body and your mind, and then close your eyes.
2. Bring your hands together and begin to rub your palms vigorously. Continue to rub faster and faster until your hands feel warm, then slowly stop rubbing and keep your palms together.
3. Imagine that between your hands is a very tiny but very bright and strong ball of light and energy. As you take a full breath in, very, very slowly separate your hands and imagine that ball of light growing and expanding, filling your hands with energy. (If you are modeling this for your child, let your hands come to about the width of your body.) (See illustration 23.)

   

   Illustration 23: Expanding-energy meditation

4. When you are ready to breathe out, gently and slowly push your hands back together, squeezing that ball of light until it gets very small.
5. Continue expanding your energy ball as you breathe in and squeezing it together as you breathe out, keeping the rest of your body as still as you can.
6. Try practicing Expanding-Energy Meditation for about two minutes the first time you try it, and then a little bit longer each time after that.

Follow-up: When you finish this meditation, ask your child what she felt. Often she will be completely shocked at how strongly she could feel the energy in her hands. Common responses are that her hands felt warm, that it felt like there were magnets pulling them together, that they felt tingly, and that the ball got heavier and heavier.

Challenges: If your child (or you) is having trouble feeling the energy in her hands, don’t worry! When we aren’t used to feeling something it can take a little bit of time to find it. Every once in a while children say that they couldn’t feel anything during this practice; this is a typical response when they moved their hands too quickly or separated them too far during the exercise. It should take the entire length of your inhalation to bring your hands apart, and they should end up about body width. It should also take the entire length of your exhalation to push them back together. Some children need to practice for a little bit longer to start feeling the energy, so if your child agrees, try again for three or four minutes and see how it goes. Make sure that you aren’t pressuring your child to feel something that she doesn’t feel. Try to avoid making suggestions about what she might be feeling, or she may start to feel like she is doing something wrong.

Daily Practice: While Expanding-Energy Meditation will usually be practiced during a yoga session, if your child seems to connect with this practice you might suggest that she try it anytime she feels disconnected from the world around her.

Single-Pointed Focus

A very simple but effective type of meditation is the practice of fixing your gaze on one steady object for a set period of time. You may have heard of an adult practice of fixing one’s gaze on a candle flame. With children we get more creative to find safer variations of the practice.

1. Choose something to be the object of your gaze. This is an important choice. A candle flame works so well for an adult practice because it is at once constant and ever changing. A candle flame has a small amount of movement that keeps drawing you in, but it doesn’t change so much that it inspires thoughts or ideas. Try to choose something with similar qualities for your practice with your child: a sand timer, a jar filled with water and glitter that you can shake, a battery-operated flickering candle (try putting it inside a brown paper bag), or something out in nature such as a stream, clouds changing shape, or leaves moving in the wind. Involving your child in this choice will make the entire practice more interesting to him.
2. Sit down on your yoga mat with your chosen object in front of you. If you are outside using an object in nature for this practice, make sure you have something clean and comfortable to sit on. Sit up tall and take a few full breaths to prepare.
3. Set a timer for two minutes (this is a good amount of time to start with, but you can try more or less depending on your child’s prior capacity and experience).
4. Fix your gaze on the object you’ve chosen, and let it fill up your mind.
5. Now, here is the most important part of this practice: When your mind wanders away from your object, try to notice right away, and then bring it back. The exercise of noticing your mind wandering, and practicing bringing it back, is the true purpose of this activity. Keep practicing until your timer goes off.
6. When the timer goes off, close your eyes and try to keep the object you have been gazing at fixed in your mind. Take a few full breaths, and when you are ready open your eyes.

Follow-up: Talk with your child about his experience practicing Single-Pointed Focus. Allow him time to share whether he was able to notice his mind wandering, and even what his mind wandered to. Practicing this alongside your child, and sharing some thoughts about your own wandering mind, is a helpful part of the experience. As your child gets more comfortable with this practice, extend the amount of time on the timer.

Challenges: Some children feel frustrated when they notice their mind wandering. They think that the point of the practice is to stay connected to their object for the whole time they are practicing, and that if their mind wanders they are doing something wrong. Make sure your child knows that everyone’s mind wanders. It is the job of his mind to make thoughts, and that is a good thing! Remind him that this activity is about noticing when his mind wanders, and that every time he notices his mind wandering he is doing the activity perfectly.

Daily Practice: Learning to notice when your mind wanders, and bring it back to the activity you want to be focusing on, is a vital life skill. Your child can remind himself of this practice anytime he has something important to do. Encourage him to take a few full breaths before starting, and remind him that it is totally natural for his mind to wander. Whether he is trying to focus on homework, a test, learning a song on the piano, or listening to a friend talk, his mind will still keep making thoughts. The important thing is that he can recognize when his mind is wandering, and bring it back.

Thought River Meditation

This seated meditation practice begins to introduce your child (in a more concrete way) to the idea of nonjudgmental awareness of her thoughts and ideas.

1. Start by having a brief discussion with your child. Ask her if she ever has lots of thoughts and ideas floating around in her head. Ask her if she ever gets stuck paying attention to one of those thoughts when she doesn’t want to (you can use the example of a song being stuck in your head). Now introduce the idea that our minds are like thought machines. It’s the job of your mind to make thoughts all the time, but we get to decide if we are going to listen to them, and we get to decide if we are going to believe them. Now is a good time to introduce the idea that you don’t have to believe everything that you think! Let her know that even though the mind makes thoughts all the time, we get to choose whether we want to spend time thinking about those thoughts. It’s important that your child understands that there is nothing wrong with her for having lots of thoughts—it actually means her mind is working perfectly. In this discussion, introduce the idea of imagining a river of thoughts flowing by us. Our minds are constantly making new thoughts and dropping them into this river. We see the thoughts float by, and when we notice them we have a choice. We can either pick them up and explore them (think about them!), or we can just notice them and then let them go floating by.
2. Tell your child that, for a few minutes, you are going to practice letting your thoughts drift by on that river. Answer any questions that she has before you begin. Make sure you let your child know that having lots of thoughts isn’t bad—it just means that she has a strong mind and it’s working hard.
3. Find a comfortable position to sit in. When our bodies are uncomfortable, we get distracted from our thoughts.
4. Close your eyes and picture a river flowing right past you. As thoughts begin to pop into your head, imagine placing those thoughts gently on the river to float downstream.
5. After a few minutes, ring a singing bowl to signal to your child that she should open her eyes.
6. Take some time to talk with your child about her experience.

Follow-up: A wonderful follow-up to this practice is to do an art project, during which you take some time to draw your river of thoughts. Try practicing this alongside your child, and see if drawing together inspires some conversation (but don’t worry if it doesn’t—just sharing the experience is worthwhile).

Challenges: The first few times you practice this activity, you might find that you are thinking about thinking. Thoughts such as “What am I thinking about now?” or “I don’t think I’m thinking anything” are common and can go into the river just like every other thought. Children often ask if a feeling or sensation is a thought. If you feel something (like an itch), that’s a sensation, but as soon as your mind says to itself “Oh, that itches,” then you’re having a thought! Try to practice long enough to let that initial mental chatter about the activity itself fall away. Your child may say that she didn’t have any thoughts, or that she couldn’t put them in the river. It’s worth continuing to practice this activity even if those things come up. It may take several sessions of talking about these ideas in order for your child to start feeling that she is actually having the experience.

Daily Practice: Thought River Meditation can be practiced anytime you are feeling overwhelmed or are having a hard time focusing. Let your child know that she can close her eyes for a moment or two, let her thoughts float down the river, and give herself a rest from her mental chatter.

Focusing in Daily Life

As your child learns that bringing his mind back to the task at hand is a skill, he will find lots of opportunities to practice it in daily life. Just like the mind wants to wander during Focus activities, the mind wants to wander during homework, test taking, instrument practice, and even during conversations with you! Remember that the wandering mind is natural, and rather than becoming angry or frustrated, just remind your child that he is perfectly capable of noticing his wandering mind, taking a full breath, and bringing his attention back to the task at hand.

If your child is having a particularly challenging day, or will be called upon to exert a large amount of focus in an upcoming activity, it can be useful to give him a little bit of time for a mind-wander break. This is just a defined stretch of time during which he is free to daydream and let his mind go anywhere it wants. I recommend setting a timer for mind-wander breaks. In order to truly give your mind a wander break, you will want to avoid conversation and outside stimulation such as music or television.

When you are interacting with your child, notice if your own mind starts to wander at any point. Kids have an almost uncanny ability to sense when our attention is diverted or fragmented. If your mind wanders when you are talking with your child, and you think he has noticed, let him know that you realized your mind was wandering, caught it, brought it back, and that he now has your full attention.