The problem of inattention in children is most often faced by parents whose children have begun systematic schooling. And it is quite understandable, since educational activity requires a child to have new, higher forms of voluntary behavior, the ability to control their mental processes, including attention. As a rule, parents are well aware that good attention is one of the most important conditions for successful learning. That is why among parents' admonitions at the beginning of the school day you can most often hear:"i need help writing a paper". For poorly performing schoolchildren, such exhortations become very commonplace. However, if the child really has problems with attention development, simply asking him or her to "pay more attention" is not enough.

Different causes

To begin with, parents need to understand the possible causes of the lack of attention of the schoolchild. Let us list the most common ones. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Children with such a diagnosis are characterized by excessive motor activity, impulsiveness, poor concentration of attention, and high distractibility. Difficulties with the organization of their behavior and attention span are usually evident long before they start school. The situation of school training only aggravates their problems. The parents of such children require extreme patience and consistency in their relationship with the child. They should carry out their educational practice in close contact with doctors, teachers, and psychologists, since children with attention deficit syndrome require special comprehensive corrective and developmental work.

Chronic somatic diseases, the child's morbidity. Children with poor health are characterized by high fatigability, low performance. Their reduced attention span may be due to a general weakening of the body. Such children need obligatory adherence to a regime, dosage of loads, rest (daytime sleep is desirable). If these conditions, which reduce the influence of physical and physiological restrictions, are observed, such children can have quite good attention.

Individual features of the nervous system. The properties of higher nervous activity affect the development of all the properties of attention: for students with a strong and agile nervous system, attention is more stable, well switched and distributed. Students with inert and weak nervous system are more likely to have unstable, poorly switchable and distributive attention. Knowing the basic features of a child's nervous system, parents can help him or her develop the qualities and skills of attention that can be trained, such as sustaining attention, switching, and distributing it.

Overwork and overload. The life of a modern child is filled with many responsibilities. Usually a schoolchild's working day is not limited to the study sessions proper, and includes visits to various clubs, sections, studios and so on. (And not all of them the child attends at his or her own request). Often a schoolboy's schedule is scheduled from morning to evening so tightly that the pupil barely has time to do his homework. There is practically no time left for proper rest, and children do not get enough sleep. Physical, psychological, and information overload inevitably leads to a decrease in performance, increased inattention, and absent-mindedness in children.

Age restrictions in the development of attention. The attention of children of younger school age may be insufficiently developed due to age-specific features of general mental development. Attention at this age is really still poorly organized, has small volume, is poorly distributed and unstable. The reason for this is insufficient maturity of the neurophysiological mechanisms which provide for processes of attention, control over performance of activity.

It is impossible to find any younger schoolchild in whose notebooks from time to time there would not be so-called mistakes of "inattention". During elementary school education in the development of attention occurs essential changes, there is an intensive development of all of its properties: a sharp (more than 2-fold) increase in the volume of attention, increases its stability, developing skills of switching and distribution.

By the age of 9-10, children become capable long enough to maintain and carry out an arbitrarily set program of actions. It is considered that younger school age is the most favorable for the purposeful development of a child's attention.

Lack of motivation to perform an activity. It is well known that even a small child can show enviable attentiveness and concentration if he is engaged in something that is very interesting to him. And if children could do only what they like, adults would not have to worry about the development of children's attention. As a rule, we speak about inattention of children when they are required to do something unattractive, not very interesting and not significant enough.

Quite often educational work acts as an unattractive activity: the child who is inattentive at school lessons or at homework can with attention be engaged in that which is not connected with study (long and concentrated enough to play, watch TV, deal with the computer, etc.). In these cases it can be a question of insufficient development of cognitive learning motivation of the schoolboy, providing his full inclusion in educational activity. However educational activities, frequently really routine and monotonous, are far from always capable of awakening and supporting the cognitive activity of the child.

And then to the aid of the organization of educational activity of the child and maintenance of its attention to it other, non-cognitive motives come to the aid: a sense of duty and responsibility, desire to receive a good mark, to deserve praise from the adult or to avoid punishment, etc. In all these cases we are talking about demanding from the child of voluntary attention, i.e. focus, concentration on process of activity which is carried out consciously, by means of volitional effort.

Thus, improvement of schoolchildren's attention is directly connected with development of their full-fledged cognitive activity and interest in intellectual activity, development of the motivational sphere as a whole, and also volitional qualities. The solution of these difficult educational tasks requires from parents enough time and considerable effort.

Vested interest

Consciously caring for the development of the child's attention, the parent himself should be attentive to the child, to show genuine interest in his activities, his life. After all, the development of attention promotes the involvement of the child in any purposeful activity. 

Development of the child's attention, his or her ability to be purposeful and organized is a long enough process, but necessary for full mental development. In this difficult work, parents can benefit from some special exercises and tasks, aimed at training various properties of attention.

Here are just a few of them

Development of Attention Concentration. The main type of exercise is the edit my paper free, which asks a child to find and cross out certain letters in a printed text. Such exercises allow a child to feel what it means to be "attentive" and to develop a state of inner concentration. This work should be done daily (5 minutes a day) for 2-4 months. It is also recommended to use tasks that require the identification of signs of objects and phenomena; exercises based on the principle of exact reproduction of a pattern (a sequence of letters, numbers, geometric patterns, movements, etc.); tracing jumbled lines, searching for hidden figures, etc.

Increasing attention span and short-term memory. Exercises are based on memorizing the number and order of a number of objects presented for inspection for a few seconds. As the exercise is mastered, the number of objects gradually increases.

Attention span training. The basic principle of exercises: the child is offered to perform two different tasks at the same time (for example, reading a story and counting pencil strokes on the table, doing proofreading exercises and listening to a record of a story, etc.). At the end of the exercise (after 5-10 minutes) the effectiveness of each task is determined.

Development of the skill of switching attention. For development of this property of attention, performance of proofreading tasks with rotation of rules of crossing out letters is offered, for example.

A variety of games and exercises for the development of attention are widely represented in psychological and pedagogical literature. The main condition which parents need to observe during this work is that exercises with the child should be systematic.

Tasks for development of attention can be offered to children in the form of games, competitions and carried out not only at the time necessarily allotted, but also as if by the way, for example, on the way to the store, on a walk, during dinner preparation, etc. The most important thing in such activities is the interest of adults, their attention to the child himself, his successes and achievements.

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