chapter seven
the A+ skill of
attention
I (Arlene) have a confession. Dear reader, while I am writing on my computer, my mind often drifts to “Hmm, I wonder if anyone has sent me a message on Facebook?” “Let me check my email really fast.” “What was that beep on my phone?” When I can’t fight the distraction any longer, I leave the pages of this manuscript for a rabbit trail of other endless things for me to click on. Sound familiar? Keeping focused on one task in the digital age is difficult for today’s adult—and it’s just as hard for kids. Growing children especially need calm and quiet to develop those muscles of attention, focus, and deep thinking. Yet the screen world does not promote any of those things.
You’re familiar with the term information overload. Picture your child’s mind as a cup. When your child spends too much time looking at screens, it’s like constantly aiming a water hose at that cup. His mind is unable to retain and process the current of stimuli and information. To cope with all the information, he forms the habit of moving from one thing to the next. Tending to distractions becomes a way of life.
One college freshman sent an email about how he has struggled with Internet addiction since elementary school: “I can’t focus on anything in school or at work in a deep or organized way. The only thing my mind wants to do is get back online and plug into games, news, and social media. I can’t seem to concentrate on anything else.”
tuning in and tuning out
“Carissa, it’s time to do your homework,” says her mom for the second time. Meanwhile, Carissa, eight, is playing her favorite video game on her mom’s phone.
“Hello, earth to Carissa. Can you even hear me?” says her mom with a laugh.
“Just let me finish this one part. I can get to the next level,” says Carissa without looking up.
Fifteen minutes later, Carissa’s mom pries the phone out of Carissa’s hands. Carissa sits down to do her homework. She looks at her assignment and begins to read. She fidgets and arranges the pencils in her cup. “Mom, I’m thirsty. Can I get a drink?” she asks.
After she returns from the kitchen with her drink, she sees her cat outside. He looks hungry. “Mom, I’m going to feed Romeo.” With Romeo’s food bowl filled up, she returns to her chair and her reading. The phone rings. “Just let it go,” yells her mom from the kitchen. But Carissa shoots up from her chair to answer it. It’s a telemarketer, so Carissa says, “No thank you” and hangs up.
Carissa’s dad walks in the family room. “It’s time for dinner.”
Carissa’s mom asks, “Did you finish your reading?”
“No,” mumbles Carissa. “I got a little distracted.”
Carissa had no trouble sitting still when she was playing her favorite game, but she couldn’t sit still for long without that device to hold her attention. Have you ever marveled at how a child can sit for long stretches of time mesmerized by a screen, yet when they are presented with homework or a similar task, they cannot seem to focus for more than a few minutes? The growing presence of screens, and particularly the Internet, in daily life has changed the way we all pay attention. The Internet demands our attention and interaction more than television, radio, or newspapers ever did. We are compelled to scroll through emails, type and hit Send, and click on links for an ever-broadening menu of pages to consider. It’s interactive and consuming.
The constant noise of the Internet, media, and video games is a huge barrier to creative thought and the development of deep thinking in children. A steady diet of screen time will hold your child’s attention, but will it assist him in paying attention in the most important areas of his life? Screen time can condition your child to expect three things that don’t always happen in real life—that what’s before him will be interesting, instant, and immediately rewarding.
Screen time is interesting. There are no dull moments in the world of screens because your child can always navigate away from something if it is not interesting. Drop-down menus offer more choices. Everything is centered around what pleases the child. Even how they listen to music caters to their interests. They don’t just have a CD of music they like; they have a playlist of exactly what they want to listen to. Any song they don’t like gets deleted. When you can create a screen world based on your preferences, you have little desire in the real world to pay attention to anything boring, irrelevant, or unpleasant.
Screen time is instant. If you want to know the answer to “Who was Abraham Lincoln?” you don’t have to open an encyclopedia or ask a teacher. You can search on your computer or phone and get the answer instantly. That ease of information is a great benefit, but it can also be a curse. Children learn that answers come easily and instantly on screens. If information requires effort to obtain, many screen-savvy kids give up. They are accustomed to instant gratification, and unfortunately that expectation spills into other areas of life, where things don’t come instantly.
Screen time gives immediate rewards. When you click on a screen, you immediately get a response: A character moves, a ball is released, or a page changes to reveal something new. A child is constantly rewarded for his engagement. Children who play video games learn quickly that if they keep pressing the buttons, they will advance to the next level. Computer programmers understand that kids will play and engage indefinitely if the rewards keep coming.
Since instruction in school isn’t always interesting, instantly gratifying, or rewarding, screen-driven kids enter the classroom at a disadvantage. They are not as willing to risk failure or endure boredom. Haley, a seventh grader, sat perplexed in a sewing class at school. She was supposed to cut out the material, using the pattern. She asked her teacher, “Can you cut this for me?”
Her teacher replied, “Is there something wrong with your hand?”
“No,” Haley answered. “I just don’t think I would be good at it.”
Although she was adept with her iPad, Haley wasn’t used to using scissors or working with material. She wasn’t sure she would be successful in cutting the pattern, and she wasn’t willing to risk making a mistake. She gave up without trying. On a screen, if you make a mistake, you can just start over without any consequences. You simply hit the Undo button, refresh a screen, or reboot. But if you cut the material wrong in the real world, you can’t go back to fix it.
When a screen-driven child faces an uncertain task, she often disengages and stops paying attention. She checks out mentally when she hears something she doesn’t find interesting. In the screen world, children are trained daily to get what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. That may hold their attention fast, but it doesn’t sound much like the real world we are preparing our children to live in.
in praise of reading
Many parents and teachers lament the shrinking attention span of the next generation. Why has the average person’s attention span dropped by 40 percent since the year 2000?1 Part of the answer lies in the electronic devices we have given our children to benefit their lives and keep them up to date. But consider this significant caveat: the more you allow your child to use phones, tablets, and other devices, the more you foster his short attention span. Constant digital stimulation creates attention problems for children who already struggle with self-control and making healthy choices. When everything is changing every three minutes in the digital world, a child is not equipped to focus and pay attention in school. If the teacher doesn’t have something fancy going on, plugged-in kids tend to get lost.
To have an idea of where children are headed in the digital age, consider this statistic about young adults between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four. In 2008, young adults read printed works for a total of just forty-nine minutes a week, down 29 percent from 2004.2 If today’s young adult reads fewer than fifty minutes a week, what might that statistic be twenty years from now? Today’s screen-driven child doesn’t have the attention span to read books, yet research has repeatedly shown that access to books and reading time is a leading predictor of school success.3
According to the Pew Research Center, eight out of ten parents say reading print books is very important for their children.4 Reading is a foundational and multisensory experience for every child. He touches the page while his mind processes what he is reading. At times he must force himself to stay focused on the written words. During reading time, things aren’t changing every five seconds. He’s following a story line and engaging in a thought process. While reading, children are learning to stay with one topic and absorb something deeply. Print reading especially strengthens attention-span muscles.
Nicholas Carr, in his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, writes, “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It’s possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it’s possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that’s not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards.”5
Online reading is peppered with distracting hyperlinks and catchy headlines vying for your attention. In contrast, a book offers only one place to focus and therein offers great value for the growing child. Reading a book is a calming and relaxing activity. When a child puts down a book, he is in a good place. Contrast that to when a child puts down a tablet or phone. He is often argumentative (“Why can’t I play longer?”), moody, and grumpy.
As a parent, you are able to guide your child’s reading progress. For many kids, reading won’t happen automatically. It must be scheduled in daily until it becomes an easy habit to maintain. Consider this comparison of three students with different reading habits.6
| student A reads | student B reads | student C reads |
| 20 minutes per day | 5 minutes per day | 1 minute per day |
| 3,600 minutes per school year | 900 minutes per school year | 180 minutes per school year |
| 1,800,000 words per year | 282,000 words per year | 8,000 words per year |
| Scores in the 90th percentile on standardized tests | Scores in the 50th percentile on standardized tests | Scores in the 10th percentile on standardized tests |
If he starts reading for twenty minutes per night in kindergarten, by the end of sixth grade Student A will have read for the equivalent of sixty school days, Student B will have read for twelve school days, and Student C will have read for 3.6 days.
Which student would you like your child to be? Reading not only offers academic advantages, it will equip your child with a longer attention span and a greater capacity for concentration.
five ways to foster a love of reading for your child
Read aloud to your child. When your child is young, place him in your lap and read to him every day. Not only are you teaching him language and bonding with your child, you are creating a happy memory that will draw him to books in the future. As your kids get older, they can sit next to you while you read a book the whole family will enjoy.
Visit the library regularly. Most things in life aren’t free, but the library still is. Take advantage of the vast resources of your local library. Look up favorite authors in the library catalog and request those books if you don’t see them immediately available. That will give your child something to look forward to during the next trip to the library. And don’t forget to pick up a book for yourself.
READING TIME FOR SCREEN TIME. Some parents have successfully helped their children embrace books by making reading a prerequisite to screen time. If your child reads for thirty minutes, she can earn thirty minutes of screen time afterward.
Find books that interest your child. What does your child enjoy—stories about ponies or biographies of baseball heroes? Look for books your child can’t put down. Ask your friends with kids the same age or older for reading suggestions. Don’t give up until you find a good fit for your reader.
Let them catch you reading. When your child sees you snuggled on the couch with a good book, it will encourage her to do the same. Talk to your kids about what you are reading and show them by your example that books are helpful and engaging.
screen time and attention disorders
Seven-year-old Keith returned from school on most days with red crayon colored in on his behavior chart. His mother had offered numerous awards and practically begged Keith to listen to his teacher and follow instructions. But instead of bringing home a green-colored behavior chart, Keith seemed destined to be one of those kids famous for acting up. At school he constantly talked out of turn, didn’t complete his work, and never raised his hand to answer questions. Home life wasn’t much better. He was disruptive during meals and aggressive toward his older sister.
His mother wondered if he had ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) but realized he could sit for hours playing video games. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with his attention span in the digital world. However, Keith’s ability to stay focused on a screen and nowhere else was actually a characteristic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many experts believe that kids with ADHD spend more time playing video games and watching television than their peers.
So is a child more fixated to screens because they have ADHD, or could the child’s fixation to screens lead to ADHD? This is a complex issue, but some studies, such as a 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics, found viewing more television and playing more video games were linked to attention problems in schoolchildren and college students. Researchers found that children who exceeded two hours per day of screen time were one-and-a-half to two times more likely to be above average in attention problems. College students showed a similar association, suggesting that exposure to screens has lasting consequences into adulthood.7
The attention a child brings to a video game is unlike the concentration they need to succeed in regular life. A child like Keith can pay attention to a game fueled by frequent changes, constant rewards, new levels, points being racked up, and boosts of dopamine to the brain. When a child’s brain grows accustomed to that fast pace, no wonder the real world becomes underwhelming and boring.
Kids who are struggling in school want to look for a place to succeed. Often they find that place of success in video games and virtual worlds. Children with attention disorders may retreat to the screen more often than other kids for companionship. If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, here are a few ways you can help him navigate screen time:
Set limits on daily screen time (try two hours or less).
Don’t permit screens in the bedroom.
Avoid violent video games.
Turn off the television, radio, and computer games while doing homework.
Video games can be helpful as a reward or an educational tool. But when children spend more than two hours a day playing video games and watching screens, their ability to pay attention elsewhere in life takes a big hit.
the mistake of multitasking
Suzy, eleven, plops her backpack on the table. She flips on the television to her favorite show. Pulling out her folder, she sets up what she needs for her homework. She turns on her parents’ tablet to look up a definition. She glances up at the television and laughs. She continues to watch as she searches online. While Suzy is on the dictionary page, she sees an advertisement for a new movie coming out. She clicks to see more while scribbling the definition of her word in her homework folder.
Across the hall in another room, Suzy’s dad, who works from home, has multiple pages open on his computer. While drafting a document, he checks his email and responds to urgent requests. The phone rings and as he listens, he scans the latest news headlines. The phone call ends, but before returning to his original document, Suzy’s dad clicks on the news video to find out what the Senate is fired up about today.
Welcome to the world of multitasking. Multitasking used to be a badge of success, a shiny word to put on your resume to show your ability to manage many tasks at once. But recently, many warnings about the pitfalls of a multitasking culture are on the rise.
Multitasking reduces the quality of your work. In one experiment, students were asked to sit in a lab and complete a standard cognitive skill test. One group of subjects was not interrupted while taking the test. The other group was told they may be contacted with further instructions at any moment via text. They were interrupted twice during the exam. The interrupted group scored 20 percent less than the other group.8 That difference is enough to bring a B-minus student down to a failing student. In another study, researchers found that workers distracted by email and phone calls suffered a fall in IQ more than twice of that found in marijuana smokers.9
If your child is multitasking while doing homework or other activities requiring focus, the quality of her work will suffer. When Suzy does her homework while watching television, she is prone to make errors she would catch if she weren’t distracted.
Multitasking changes the way you learn. Research shows that people use different areas of the brain for learning and storing new information when they are multitasking. Brain scans of people who are distracted show activity in the striatum, a part of the brain used for learning new skills. Brain scans of people who are not distracted show activity in hippocampus, a region used for storing and recalling information.10
If you want your child to be able to think deeply, take away distractions such as earbuds, televisions, or computers while he is concentrating on a task. Media multitasking—using several different media simultaneously—has increased from 16 percent of media users in 1999 to 26 percent in 2005.11 We are becoming more accustomed to using our devices all at once—the TV, texting, computer, video games, and emails. This digital immersion is changing the way your child learns.
Multitasking creates skimmers. Because multitasking trains a child to pay attention to all incoming information, he becomes adept at skimming. Otherwise, he would be overwhelmed. Think of your child’s brain as a control tower. Bombarded by digital stimulus, headlines, emails, and texts, his brain keeps directing that information traffic, “Next, next, next.” Multitaskers tend to search for new information instead of putting to work the older, more valuable information they already have. This translates into a child with a shallow understanding of many miscellaneous things instead of a deeper understanding of key concepts. Children who constantly multitask have a hard time sorting out the relevant from the irrelevant. Although today’s English homework may be the task at hand, other things seem equally or more compelling, especially to a plugged-in child: Look at that new game. What’s that toy being advertised? Is it almost time for my favorite show? There is little room for depth when there are so many options to sort through. Heavy multitaskers have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information.
Multitasking wastes time. Can you guess the average number of times per hour an office worker checks his email in-box? The answer is thirty times.12 Adults are constantly toggling between tasks, which typically wastes time instead of saving it. Researchers have found it takes an average of twenty-five minutes to return to an original task after an interruption.13
Justin, eleven, has been sitting at the kitchen table with his homework open for more than an hour. He has reread the same math problem again and again. First, he couldn’t figure out the problem, so he picked up his video game and played for a few minutes to relax. He read the problem again and decided to text his friend about it. His friend didn’t understand it either; they started texting about other things. He decided to google the math problem, but he checked his favorite website first. Before long, it was time for dinner. His homework was incomplete, and he had wasted a lot of time tending to distractions.
eight ways to help your child finish homework
1. Use games or charts for rewards. Make a sticker chart where your child can place a sticker on each day that homework is done. Offer rewards for a completed week or month of homework. Create games to reward finished homework. For instance, if your child finishes homework all week, he can earn points. After fifty points, he can choose a small prize from the store.
2. HAVE A HOMEWORK SUPPLY BOX. What does your child need to complete her homework—pencils, eraser, pens, ruler, stapler, glue, tape, and scissors? Keep these supplies in one place so they are easy to find. If anything is taken out of the box, remember to replace it.
3. Know the best time for homework. Some kids like to start homework immediately after school so they can have the pleasure of playing afterward. Others need to run around for an hour after sitting at a desk for most of the day. Adjust your homework routine to what works best with your child.
4. SCHEDULE OUT BIGGER PROJECTS. When your child comes home with a large or long-term project, create a calendar to help break up the project into doable time chunks. To illustrate the value of doing a little bit at a time, tell her about a time when you procrastinated.
5. Work with a timer. If your child can complete his homework within half an hour, set a timer for thirty minutes and encourage him to finish before the timer beeps. If your child needs a longer time for homework, you can still set the timer for thirty minutes. When it beeps, take a five-minute break, and then resume the homework.
6. Offer healthy snacks. Children are often hungry after school. Avoid junk food, but offer healthy snacks like fruits or carrot sticks along with a glass of water.
7. Create an environment conducive to concentration. Is there enough light? Is the workspace uncluttered? Are the television and other electronic devices off? If your child needs to use the computer for homework, monitor usage to keep him on track.
8. Keep the same schedule every week. Children thrive in predicable schedules. You may have to adjust your homework times on different days because you have sports practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. As long as there is a consistent routine to follow that your child understands, she will be able to make those adjustments.
attention boosters
Do you want your child to pay better attention in school? One solution isn’t found in educational software, more time hitting the books, or getting a tutor. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, play is essential to cognitive development in children.14 Playtime isn’t video game time; it’s time to throw a Frisbee, shoot a basketball, or play hopscotch.
Being outdoors is especially rejuvenating for the minds of children and adults. A series of psychological studies revealed that after spending time close to nature in a rural setting, people exhibited greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally improved cognition. Their brains were calmer and sharper.
Subjects were given a series of mentally fatiguing tests designed to measure their working memory and ability to exert control over their attention. After the test, half of the group spent an hour walking through a secluded woodland park. The other half spent an hour walking along busy downtown streets. Both groups returned to take the test again. The group that spent the time in the park significantly improved their performance.15
The Internet cannot provide the calming experiences that nature can. There are no puffy clouds for kids to look at or peaceful streams to skip a rock on. A visit to your local park or day trip to a scenic place will help your child calm his mind, preparing him to give the attention required at school and in life.
In addition to nature, you can boost your child’s ability to pay attention through nurture, namely, by eye contact. Eye contact is an essential part of strengthening your child’s attention muscle. When you are talking with someone, you look at each other, which shows you have each other’s attention. Every parent has said at one time or another in frustration, “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
Many children are famous for staring at their electronic devices and little else. Teaching children to make eye contact with others helps them focus their attention on the person at hand. When you insist upon eye contact and give it generously, you help your child pay attention relationally to others and increase his level of empathy.
In our society and at home, children see modeled a primary relationship with screens and a lack of eye contact with people. In marriage, often the complaint is, “He says he’s listening, but he’s always watching TV or he’s got the computer on.” Or it could be a husband trying to get eye contact from his wife while she’s on social media. Technically the spouse may be listening, but maintaining eye contact demonstrates that he or she is paying attention.
In this digital age, so many things vie for your attention and the attention of your child. The ding of a new text message. Streaming videos. The next level of a video game. Dozens of new emails. Both adults and children must learn to pay attention to the important things of life, even in the absence of stimulus, rewards, or entertainment.
What William James wrote in the 1800s is relevant for today: “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.” Your child’s ability to pay attention is not only an academic concern. It’s a matter of the heart.