CHAPTER 4

Increasing concentration skills

‘How come I have to pay for attention?’

Question asked by eight-year-old boy
after being told at school to sit down and pay attention

Let’s now turn our thoughts to how building on a child’s strengths can be used to increase a skill that underpins all acts of genius: the ability to concentrate.

The concentration span of most kids is at least a rainy day of reruns of The Simpsons and Family Guy, ten consecutive games of Call of Duty, viewing the postings from 400 Facebook friends, 60 texts from besties, and a whole day of nagging you for something they really, really want.

The ability of kids to concentrate is not the problem: the issue is how to help them to fix their focus on one thing and keep it there. As the world becomes more complex, the ability to hold sustained concentration to think deeply about ideas is a distinguishing feature of genius.

This is partly because brains are wired to wander. Rex likes to prowl around amusing and distracting himself. The advent of multitasking plays into our natural tendencies of directing our attention to the latest and the greatest. Concentration is a limited resource. We only have so much focus before our mind starts to wander off in search of new entertainment. Paying attention to one thing necessarily comes at the expense of another.

Everyone has concentration problems from time to time. Especially when our primitive brain becomes overloaded, tired, hungry, sleep-deprived or anxious. To ensure that we sustain our concentration we need to take Rex out of the equation. We can do this by developing systems, checklists, procedures, formulas and habits.

The amount of learning children can do directly relates to their ability to concentrate and focus attention. Many of history’s recognised geniuses were known to have tenacious levels of concentration. Einstein, Newton and Darwin were all noted for their ability to concentrate. Thomas Edison performed 1600 experiments in an attempt to find the most suitable filament for a light bulb. Of course, being so focused can also have its downside: Edison became so lost in his experiments he forgot to attend his own wedding. On one occasion Albert Einstein and a geologist friend were so engrossed in a discussion about earthquakes that neither noticed a big earthquake was actually happening and their building had been evacuated.

Geniuses develop laser-like levels of concentration for the things they are interested in. Sometimes they also have scant disregard for almost everything else. Isaac Newton only realised he was boiling his watch when he tried to tell the time by looking at an egg.

Has anyone ever said to you, ‘You’ve got a mind like a sieve?’ Well, they were right! Approximately 99 per cent of the information that comes into your awareness is immediately discarded. That’s just as well because if it wasn’t, you would be swamped with trivial detail. Thankfully, you are a very discerning person. When you were a kid, however, you weren’t quite so discerning.

Concentration is a bit like a bouncer at a nightclub. It rapidly inspects candidates – in this case ideas – for admission to the brain and filters out and discards those it thinks are unworthy of further attention. Some children have a bouncer that lets in too many ideas; others the wrong sort. So the trick to developing genius levels of concentration in children is for them to learn what to concentrate on and what to filter out.

Most of us are skilled at screening out irrelevant information. For example, most of you will not have been aware of your shoes on your feet until your attention is drawn to them. Children are often less skilled at working out what is the main thing to concentrate on.

Developing concentration

Like any other skill, concentration can be enhanced and made more automatic. Anyone who has learned a complex set of manoeuvres – such as riding a bike, playing a musical instrument or driving a car – will have experienced the initial concern of ‘how do I concentrate on all these things at once?’ only to find with practice they become easier.

Geniuses can concentrate but they focus on very specific things. In my experience children are naturally drawn towards some areas and can concentrate on them better than others. Dr Mel Levine, the author of A Mind at a Time , influenced much of my thinking in this area and says that we need to think about how to parent a diverse range of minds.

In following sections I discuss some common types of budding geniuses who have some interesting concentration styles. While these are general categories, they can help you to find ways to help your children focus and concentrate.

You may not be able to identify just one exact category for your children, but parents generally find it is a useful guide in helping children focus their attention when they are learning something new.

The Happy Wanderers

The area these geniuses concentrate on is visual. These are the sorts of children who may not be able to tell you what you were talking about a minute ago, but will notice that you have different shoes on today.

These children often have an amazing amount of interest and energy. It’s almost as if their heads spin around trying to take everything in. Their eyes almost bounce around in their heads seeking out all sorts of things to look at or to wander over to check out. They know what they are interested in – everything they see! This can mean all visuals – colours, shapes, movement and art. If you don’t capture Happy Wanderers’ interest visually, they will wander off and find something else to look at. Basically if it’s not visually interesting, it’s not interesting.

One Happy Wanderer I worked with could never tell me what we had just discussed but could tell me there was a frog outside on a branch and that the left corner of the curtains was more faded than the rest.

The upside of this is that these children grow into people who are often popular, aesthetic, interesting, energetic and sensitive to the needs of others.

Happy Wanderers are often very astute at reading the emotions of other people. They are often extremely successful long term in careers that require these skills such as counselling, art collecting, business, hospitality and hotel management, as well as social work, medicine and teaching.

How you can help Happy Wanderers

To help Happy Wanderers unlock their genius you need to help them prime their concentration.

These children need visual signals that tell them it’s time to listen. School teachers often use these signals – hands on hips, one finger over your lips (sssh time), hands on heads or one raised arm – to settle classrooms of kids. Parents can use these same signals at home. Maintain eye contact and reduce visual distractibility.

If you don’t have eye contact with a Happy Wanderer, you don’t have their attention. With smaller Wanderers, bend down and look at them eye to eye before trying to give them information.

Happy Wanderers are often quite cheery kids who can laugh at themselves when you bring them back on track. However, just because they respond amiably doesn’t always mean they will stay on track.

These children often thrive and concentrate best in visually rich environments and can focus incredibly well if involved in producing collages, drawings, posters and flow diagrams.

Parents can help Happy Wanderers to concentrate by using:

• jigsaw puzzles – increases motor skills, abstract reasoning and spatial organisation
• I-spy games – to develop language and attention
• collages, flow charts and posters – assists planning and organising information
• coloured pieces of paper for them to write on – assists memory
• mobiles showing important photos attached to ceilings – reminds them of past successes
• glitter pens, paints and crayons – makes note-taking exciting
• the card game, concentration – for memory
• hands-on, concrete examples and diagrams in mathematics
• wall charts and timelines featuring key historical events with pictures of key people
• mind maps and brain bubble maps
• signs and reminders such as ‘Pack your lunch!’ on doors, refrigerators, in lunch boxes or on phones
• cue cards, palm cards (see Chapter 11 for a description of how to use these)
• spot-the-difference pictures, TED-Ed videos and animations.

The Frequent Flyers

The genius of Frequent Flyers is their ability to link seemingly unconnected ideas and concepts together with great creativity and originality. These children have ideas that ricochet around and go zooming off to distant planets and it’s hard to keep their ideas in check long enough for them to focus.

Frequent flyers are creative linkers of ideas and often thrive in the long term in careers that involve these skills: marketing, scriptwriting, advertising, designing, innovative technologies, inventing and events promoting.

While these kids often grow up to be creative and imaginative adults who are innovative thinkers, they need to learn to balance their dream time with their focus time. Say to them, ‘You have five minutes of dream time then we’ll do five minutes of focusing.’

As their ideas bounce around at a great rate, these kids often respond to time challenges and games. For example, you can challenge them to a shopping game where they have to collect and put three items from the supermarket list into the shopping trolley before you get a set number of items.

Some Frequent Flyers get jumbled. In their rush towards the next big idea, they lose sight of the steps involved in getting there. So while routines are not Frequent Flyers’ strongest suit, they will benefit from habits and routines that teach them timing and sequencing. Along with concentration and memory, the ability to put things in order (or sequencing) is a very important skill for the development of their genius.

How you can help Frequent Flyers

Parents can develop a Frequent Flyer’s ability to concentrate through basic tasks like tidying up, cooking and getting ready for the day. Setting the table can be useful in developing concentration. Help them by asking questions such as: How many people are dining? How many knives will we need? Are we having soup? Do you think we should put out the plates before the place mats? Try to get them to sequence the process.

Cooking and following recipes is terrific for Frequent Flyers as it gives them a sense of sequences. Don’t worry if you have a few cooking disasters – learning to put the eggs into the cake before icing it is a valuable lesson. Drama, theatre and debating are also helpful for learning sequencing. Be sure to read the section on developing systems in Chapter 8 as it strongly applies to Frequent Flyers.

Take Frequent Flyers on a mental trip where they can fancifully dream up all sorts of ideas related to a particular concept. For example, one game you can play with Frequent Flyers is to get them to dream up all the weirdest types of cars (or houses, or animals) that they can think of and talk about all of the features they like. You can then ask them to select a combination of features and draw or design one of them. This helps Frequent Flyers to learn how to value their creativity as well as how to use it.

You can help Frequent Flyers develop sequencing skills by playing:

• Battleships – assists sequencing
• chess – helps problem-solving and strategic thinking
• Chinese chequers – helps planning and identifying patterns
• ordering and arranging collections – assists sequencing
• dominoes – helps planning and sequencing
• tennis, badminton, ping pong, lacrosse, hockey, football, calisthenics, dressage – builds sequencing skills.

The Spies

These are the kids that intelligence agencies should recruit. Their genius is their ability to pick up on every word, sound, nuance and tone. You’ll know if you have one of these children in your home because it’s virtually impossible to have a private discussion without them picking up on it.

Spies are easily distracted by sounds. At times all the wrong sounds seem to be amplified in their minds. As they are sensitive to distracting sounds, they need to learn to reduce their exposure to them. For that reason, sitting closer to teachers is important.

Often these kids respond well to music playing softly in the background when they are learning. Headphones with soft ambient music can help them focus. Spies may learn best when you use a particular background piece of classical or instrumental music. Experiment to see what suits your child best.

These children also learn well through sound. Audio books on CD or an iPod are good. Helping them make audio recordings of things they want to remember and using rhymes for sequences is also valuable.

Reading ‘create your own adventure’ books to them so they need to listen carefully and then choose a course of action can be helpful.

Some of these kids are terrific listeners. They are just not always sure what they should be listening to. Long term, many of them find successful careers as language teachers, interpreters, radio announcers, musicians, audio technicians, recording engineers, actors, telephone call-centre workers and air-traffic controllers.

Teaching Spies to listen carefully and to speak in whole sentences rather than snippets of phrases is important. Two family rules that are especially useful if you have a Spy are:

1. It’s good manners to listen when someone is speaking.
2. In this family we speak in whole sentences (we don’t respond, in fact we are stone deaf, to grunts, whats, dunnos, as ifs and whatevers!).

How you can help Spies

While sound is the area of genius for Spies, some are not always great listeners. They can be so quick to pick up on sounds that they find it difficult to work out which sound to focus on.

Teaching listening skills takes time and persistence (not to mention the patience of a saint!). Try using an activity where you can give instructions (such as bedtime, washing up, cleaning up the bedroom). Choose an activity later in the day so you don’t have the time pressure of needing to be somewhere by a specific time.

Allow yourself enough time and don’t get interrupted. Switch the phone off. Get your child’s attention. Gain and maintain eye contact. Calmly ask him or her to do the task. Use brief sentences. Ladders of understanding – where you outline five steps to complete a task (see Chapter 11) – can be helpful for Spies.

Make sure they know what to do. Don’t let Spies get off task. Calmly, point out the consequences if they don’t do the task. Persist until the task is completed. Make a plan to help your children build this into a habit. Remember, new habits take time to learn.

You can also help Spies develop their genius by:

• having some periods of learning in silence
• using soft gentle music to lower their levels of energy
• playing rhyming games and reciting poetry
• playing 20-question games
• listening to recorded stories and audio books
• making podcasts
• playing ‘repeat after me’
• playing Pictionary
• playing ‘Simon says’
• summarising a sports broadcast into a highlights summary of 50 words or less
• creating newspaper headlines of the main things they need to remember.

The Fidgeters

These are the busy fingers brigade, who are always touching, fiddling, doodling, feeling, twisting and picking away at something. Their fingers are always doing something. Their genius is in their touch.

Some Fidgeters find it very difficult to focus on what is being said to them unless they are doing something with their hands. You’ll find adult Fidgeters in lectures knitting, crocheting or doodling.

Fidgeters have tactile distractibility. They’re the sort of kid who sits in school, not saying a word, as they become absorbed in twisting their hair. Schools often have these kids sit on physio balls or blow-up seats so that they can squirm and move while working.

These kids are often great collectors of things: bottle tops, stamps, dolls, war gaming-figures, football cards, Lego pieces, cuddly toys, golf balls, marbles and, sometimes, worms. You will find all sorts of weird things they have picked up in their pockets.

It is through arranging their collections that these children learn sequencing and develop concentration. Their bedrooms often contain a growing menagerie of objects. It’s almost as if all of the genius of these kids is from their elbows down.

When they grow up Fidgeters often become skilled artists, builders, surgeons, mechanics, electricians, musicians, plumbers, carpenters, farmers, computer technicians, fashion designers, physiotherapists, masseurs or robotics technicians. It’s a hands-on world for these children. They have fine motor skills to a degree that leaves the rest of us feeling clumsy and oafish.

These kids are often sensitive people who read feelings well, have excellent eye–hand and fine motor coordination.

How you can help Fidgeters

Unlocking a Fidgeter’s genius is a very hands-on process for parents. Involving children in caring for pets and learning chess and musical instruments can be helpful.

Some of these children are insatiable in terms of acquisitions (this often develops into ambition!). Helping them to build collections can be worthwhile. Some Fidgeters, when they become insatiable in their demands, can be helped to focus on adding to their less expensive rock, stick, stamp, miniature figures or pressed flower collection.

Lego, building models, learning knitting or sewing, meccano sets, jigsaw puzzles, Rubik’s cubes, mazes, constructing and painting small figures are just some of the activities that often help the Fidgeters to learn how to concentrate.

As these kids are often wrigglers who squirm, doodle, pick, flick and twist, teach them stillness if you can, but realise some of them just concentrate best when they are fiddling with something.

Being able to sit still is an important skill for school. Games like statues, Twister and musical chairs where you lose the chair if you get up, can assist the development of concentration and stillness. Asking your children to count how long they can hold a statue position can also be fun.

Combining actions with storytelling can be another great way of involving Fidgeters. For example, parents can say to Fidgeters that every time they hear a word in a story that is something they could drink (or eat, or jump over and so on), they can wave their hands in the air.

As with the Happy Wanderers, signals such as hands on heads or placing your fingers against your lips to indicate the desire for quietness to show that it’s time to concentrate can be helpful.

Some Fidgeters are so intent on tactile sensations that you need to rev them up before teaching them stillness. Alternating times of intense activity with times of rest helps these kids to learn how to surf their energy waves and settle down.

Some Fidgeters are good at using their large muscle groups but need help to develop fine motor skills. You can help them by shifting gradually to more precise use of their muscles. For example, as well as dancing, bouncing and jumping they might be helped to start drawing, painting, shaping clay or creating craft pieces.

Activities that you can use to help your Fidgeters flourish include:

• handball – increases eye-motor coordination and team skills (especially for doubles)
• kite building and flying – encourages experimentation
• Lego – increases gross and fine motor coordination
• mazes – encourages problem-solving
• gymnastics and dance – directs energy, encourages focusing and fine and gross motor coordination
• pony clubs – increases organisation, physical strength and coordination, planning and sequencing
• musical instruments like violin, guitar, piano, cello or trumpet for those Fidgeters with fine motor skills; drums and trombones for those with strengths in gross motor skills
• model building – increases fine motor skills
• blocks, dice and tiles – helps to learn mathematics
• knitting, sewing – assists in sequencing
• woodwork – helps in planning, sequencing
• construction projects – increases skills in time management and sequencing.

The Star Trekkers

Creative brain leaps are the spark of genius in Star Trekkers. These children go where no-one has gone before! They are often inventive, exciting people who strike out in new and interesting ways towards as yet unimagined frontiers.

The absentminded professor is an example of a Star Trekker. Star Trekkers often have splinter skills with some areas being highly developed while others seem almost non-existent.

They often show flashes of lightning brilliance followed by a display of vagueness.

Star Trekkers are the sort of people who may invent a whole new way of transporting people to where they want to go, but are almost incapable of dressing themselves in the morning.

When introduced to a new idea or concept they look blankly at you as if the idea has appeared mysteriously from the outer reaches of space and has no relationship to any other idea they have ever encountered. They can treat every event in their life as unique and unconnected to anything in the past.

While their apparent inability to draw upon their past learning and experience can be frustrating, these kids are often quick and exciting thinkers who are able to see new possibilities in things (partly because they are not so constrained by past thinking).

Paradoxically they can creatively connect ideas in unpredictable and creative ways, similar to the Frequent Flyers, but they overlook the obvious links right under their noses.

How you can help Star Trekkers

To unlock Star Trekkers’ genius you need to help them build on their capacity to see patterns and connections. Telling them clearly how one thing connects to another is helpful, as is pointing out similarities by asking questions such as ‘How are a cat and a tiger alike?’ ‘What do a robot and a car have in common?’

Parenting one of these kids means that you become a specialist in POTBO (pointing out the bleeding obvious) because if you don’t do it, they’ll never get it.

Finding ways to connect life events also helps Star Trekkers to concentrate. Calendars, diaries, posters, fridge magnets, family noticeboards and stickers are useful ways of connecting life events and developing awareness.

Life calendars are a great way of collecting memories – the family collects pictures of all the good things that have happened in January, February, on a holiday and so on and makes a collage that can be kept on the fridge as a reminder to Star Trekkers of all the good things in life. Life calendars can be used with all children.

Young Star Trekkers can benefit from routines that help them organise their thoughts. A family noticeboard that puts up highlights for each day is one method. Each day can be described in a different way – Marvellous Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesday, Tremendous Thursday, Fantastic Friday, Sensational Saturday, Superb Sunday.

Using visual aids such as stickers and reminders that it is ‘x sleeps to go’ before an event helps these kids to focus. (See also the homework strategies outlined in the next section for Social Secretaries.) Older children benefit from flow charts, timelines, mind maps, diagrammatic representations and just chatting about how events relate to each other. Rule books that summarise key rules (such as ‘i before e except after c’) can also help them to discern patterns. In secondary school, it’s important for parents to read their children’s set novels because your ability to draw out connections for them will be a strong factor in their success.

If this sounds familiar to you, be sure to read closely Chapters 6 and 7 on planning and decision-making.

Jousting January	Fabulous February	Miraculous March	Awesome April
Mirthful May	Joyful June	Jingling July	Artful August
Super September	Original October	Neat November	Dynamic December

The Social Secretaries

The world of people, feelings and sharing is the area of genius for Social Secretaries. Teachers know these children well. They love people. They chatter in class. They pass notes. They send text messages. They plan events. They take selfies and love social media. They are social addicts!

These children are so attuned to their social world that sometimes you get the feeling that an idea left unexpressed would be a thought wasted. Social Secretaries often find it difficult to reflect and think, finding it easier to talk through issues and ideas.

The upside of having a Social Secretary is that they are often very dynamic, people persons who often do well in retail, marketing, events management and public relations and business. They are usually popular, outgoing, sensitive extroverts.

Many of them are chatty. A thought left unexpressed is a thought wasted. For this reason social media sites such as Facebook can be incredibly compelling for these children. They will share their breakfast menu with the world. As they are helpful people they will be drawn to help others in need, making the world of Facebook particularly alluring and dangerous.

If their social media friends are experiencing difficulties, the Social Secretaries will often share in the despair.

Suggesting that they self-regulate their use of social media sites is a complete and utter waste of time. You will at times need to say firmly to Social Secretaries, ‘Switch that off and do the things you need to do.’

These kids can find themselves easily led by others, fearful of conflict and distracted by others at school.

Some Social Secretaries are skilful with words and get enchanted by the sound of their own voices to the extent that you may need to reinforce a common family rule: ‘Say excuse me if you have to interrupt.’ Also they can be in such a rush to communicate that they will speak to you when they are in another room. To discourage conversations that are yelled between rooms in your home, feign deafness.

How you can help Social Secretaries

Social Secretaries are the group least likely to embark on a solo sailing trip around the world. They thrive on the presence of others. Unlocking the genius of Social Secretaries requires you to give them sufficient time with other people to enjoy life as well as some time for solo reflection to learn that they can think independently.

In terms of developing concentration skills, Social Secretaries often respond well to learning magic tricks, circus skills, acting and drama, singing and being a part of choirs, musical instruments, team sports that are not intensely competitive, puppetry and being given some responsibility for organising family functions.

A common issue for Social Secretaries (as well as others) is homework. The Social Secretaries and the Star Trekkers are especially prone to looking blankly at homework diaries. Both need to be helped to develop a system of writing down any homework that is set. You may need to set up a system of checking what homework is required with teachers.

To help develop these skills, find out from the teacher what homework is required. Then ask your child to write out what is required. Check whether your child has written it down correctly. Keep doing this until your Social Secretary has the skills of comprehending what is required.

You can also ask your kids to tell you everything they already know about the topic to be learned (this may not be much). Social Secretaries often find speaking easier than writing so asking them to tell you their ideas will probably be more productive than asking them to write down what they know.

It can be helpful for you to write down and map out the key points as they tell them to you. Then ask them to tell you the questions that they have and the parts they are uncertain about. Write these down as well. Use these questions to help them structure the format and content of their project or assignment. Consider which questions they can answer, those for which they’ll need an explanation from you, those that need research, and what skills they need.

Wherever possible, relate abstract concepts to people, tribes or creatures. In mathematics turn formulas into sentences with words rather than symbols and ask children to explain their reasoning to you.

Some Social Secretaries need to learn how to enjoy their own company. Relying on others to entertain them all the time can leave them with no time to reflect or plan.

Help them to see the difference between being alone and loneliness. Parents can call time alone ‘pause time’, ‘catch-up time’ or ‘thinking time’. Art projects are often a good way of starting this. Caring for pets is also helpful. Reading novels is another way for Social Secretaries to be involved with characters rather than relying on the people around them.

The Amplifiers

Last but certainly not least, we have the Amplifiers. The genius of Amplifiers is that they have drive in abundance and energy to burn. When they’re really engaged in a challenge they have the determination and willpower to overcome major obstacles. These kids have an inbuilt ability to turn up the volume on whatever is happening around them.

Life for an Amplifier can be a series of adventures that they glide through with a devil-may-care look in their eyes. They are often energetic, brave and courageous people who seek out intense experiences in their lives. Unless they learn to moderate their volume controls, success at school is difficult. When tuned into the needs of others they are fantastic and inspirational leaders, teachers, managers and self-employed tradespeople.

You may need to explain to these children the type of behaviour that is expected in various settings. We all have to learn to behave differently in different settings. Amplifiers are often so busy making a racket they don’t notice the context has changed.

Some of these children can grow into adults who you feel could take the world on but whenever they get a great idea, there’s always an even greater one around the corner and they find it difficult to follow through.

Often these kids have very distinct patterns of concentration. At some times of the day they can be very focused. At other times, they are all over the place. You need to observe your child’s rhythms very carefully and to shape learning times for reading and homework accordingly.

Amplifiers are very sensitive to heightened emotions. If there is conflict around they will pick up on it and often increase it. This means it is very important for you to consciously build and develop goodwill in your families. It may also be necessary to reduce or actively discourage competitiveness between family members.

How you can help Amplifiers

Unlock Amplifiers’ genius by helping them select challenges that are worthy of them and by teaching them to modulate their volume. As Amplifiers like intensity, they will respond well to time trials, challenges and games that involve speed and action. Look carefully for activities that absorb and captivate them and try to diversify them.

These children need times to rev up and be very active followed by times when they can calm down or rest, so alternating times of activity with times of passive learning is helpful.

Some Amplifiers are so fast they focus only on the end point of a task. Helping them identify and plan the steps involved in achieving an outcome can be worthwhile. Helpful ways to guide Amplifiers include: ‘If we want to do x, what are we going to need to do to get there? What do we do first, second, last?’ Helping them identify the steps toward an outcome will improve their planning skills.

Most team games and sports involve times of being active alternating with times of being the audience to someone else’s performance. The Amplifiers may need to be helped to see how times of non-active involvement can be used to think, plan and form strategies, otherwise their concentration drifts off.

Amplifiers usually have willpower in abundance. This is great, but it can also lead them to mistakenly think they can rely only on themselves. Not everyone has the same level of determination and energy as an Amplifier. Parents can help Amplifiers to realise that success is not just a matter of solo glory. There are times when you get much further by utilising and leveraging the skills of others. Some useful strategies include:

• personal best and positive coaching methods
• cooperative games
• team games.

My child is all or none of the above!

If you think your child is part Happy Wanderer, a flash of a Frequent Flyer, a touch of a Spy, a smidge of a Fidgeter as well as a being a bit of a Star Trekker, don’t despair. Initially many children appear to be a bit of everything.

Parents often report that it takes a bit of time to really learn a child’s concentration style. Take notice of when they seem to concentrate best and build on this.

Be prepared to experiment for a while before deciding the main features of your child’s concentration pattern. It’s worth taking the time to determine your child’s pattern so that you can lead him or her towards success. Success involves determining the things you are good at – and doing more of them – while also having some awareness of the things you are not so great at, and not being overly bothered by them.

Schools generally try to make children good at everything. They usually have a curriculum or syllabus to teach. But this is not the way genius works. Geniuses find the things that they are good at and focus on them with great intensity while allowing other skills to become irrelevant.

Of course you don’t want to narrow down children’s skills too early, but knowing their concentration pattern and strengths will help you help them. When your child is struggling with something or finding it hard to comprehend, offering him or her alternatives can help: ‘Well, why don’t you make a drawing of it/record the steps on a recording device/turn it into a challenge/find a study group to work with/make a clay model of it?’ Parents can encourage their children to utilise their strengths and learn in ways that suit them.

Playing to your strengths is important because in life, success is contagious. Get a whiff of success and you tend to go in search of getting more of it.

Don’t be too concerned if you cannot see your child in the styles I have presented. These simply reflect children I’ve encountered during many years of clinical practice. I haven’t described the entire world of people in this chapter. But keep looking for the things that your child naturally seems to concentrate on so you can help them to focus and flourish.

Developing concentration
Ages 2–4	Play concentration games such as Look at me and Silent statues. Practise balancing, drawing and playing for extended periods. Attach mobiles to ceilings with pictures of important groupings. Play Repeat after me. Dancing Play hide and seek or tic-tac-toe. Play with Matchbox cars, marbles, puppets, dolls, teddy bears. Throwing, catching Nerf balls. Immerse them in language. Read aloud to them. Sing songs like ‘The Alphabet Song’ and ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’. Read and re-read picture books. Count fingers, toes, ears, eyes, noses, people. Explore rock pools.
Ages 5–7	Play simple card games such as Snap and Fish. Provide jigsaw puzzles to help motor skills, abstract reasoning and spatial organisation. Play I-spy to develop language and attention. Sit kids down to do collages, flow charts and posters to assist planning and organising information. Provide coloured pieces of paper for kids to write on to assist memory. Use signs and reminders such as ‘Pack Your Lunch!’ Display photos to remind them of past successes. Use glitter pens, paints and crayons to make note-making exciting. Play the card game Concentration to strengthen memory skills. Play ‘Simon says’. Dance, roller skate, make sandcastles. Play with remote control cars, train sets, telescopes, mosaics, Power Rangers, model cars. Practise simple model building – aeroplanes, figures, robots. Play Monopoly (Junior), Chinese chequers. Be a spy, birdwatch.
Ages 8–11	Play Twister or musical chairs. Play handball to improve visual motor skills (eye–hand coordination) and team skills (especially for doubles). Build kites and fly them. Play with Lego to improve gross and fine motor coordination. Do mazes to practise problem-solving. Learn gymnastics and dance. Go to pony clubs. Learn musical instruments like violin, guitar, piano, cello and trumpet. Build models to assist fine motor skills. Play with blocks, dice and tiles to learn mathematics. Have some periods of learning in silence. Use soft gentle music to lower their levels of energy. Encourage rhyming games and reading and writing poetry. Listen to recorded stories and audio books. Play Pictionary, Monopoly, jigsaw puzzles or games with dice with the whole family. Dance, jump rope, throw a frisbee, play with a hula hoop or yo-yo. Try pottery, sculpture, more intricate model building. Practise magic tricks.
Ages 12–18	Play Battleships to learn about sequencing. Play chess to encourage problem-solving and strategic thinking. Play Chinese chequers to practise planning. Play Risk, backgammon, card games or dominoes. Learn and play musical instruments. Join a band or choir. Do theatre sports. Practise poetry slam-dunks (poems that are created on the run with each person adding a word – good for listening, focusing and improvisational thinking). Make a video or podcasts. Play computer games or alternate reality gaming. Go geo-caching. Practise meditation and mindfulness. Dance. Go skating or go-karting. Try clay modelling. Experiment with fashion design.