Attention is the most important factor in learning and intellectual progress.

Paying attention is crucial to learning both in and out of school.

Every day, as you go about your daily life, you have to make plans. For some time now, I have been practicing planning each day the night before. So, before I go to sleep, I pull out my planner and schedule my tasks and activities for the next day.

You make plans all the time and need to keep track of your time as you execute those plans. Schedules require you to finish tasks within a given time frame.

In addition to that, you usually have to monitor more than one thing at a time.

When you engage in discussions, you have to include past knowledge, as well as evaluate ideas and reflect on the work that you’re doing.

As you labor, you must evaluate whether you need to ask for help or request more information.

If that work is taking place in a group situation, you must know how to engage in group dynamics.

Furthermore, when you are part of a discussion, you must learn to wait, and speak when you are called on or when there is a pause in the conversation. To be effective, you must know the communication interplays between listener and speaker.

Sometimes, you need to make mid-course corrections while thinking, reading, writing, or working.

The brain is constantly evaluating to what it must pay attention.

As children move through the early elementary grades and encounter the demands to complete schoolwork independently, they have to learn how to do those same things. If they aren’t learning at a pace that keeps up with the school requirements or the demands of their tasks, you will see them struggle to do some of the above-mentioned processes.

Sustained attention and flexible attention is what allows the child to be successful at those processes.

Attention is one of the executive functioning skills I wrote about in my previous article. It is one of the management skills of the brain.

Thing #1 – Executive function is mediated…facilitated…by attention.

What is Attention?

It is the ability to focus on a person or task for a period of time and shifting that attention when needed. This is sustained attention with the capacity to be flexible, when necessary.

When your child is in school, he must be able to sustain his attention on the instruction delivered by his teacher or the task that has been assigned. Then when directed, he must be able to shift his attention to the next activity.

Think about attention like a conductor. It is the mechanism through which the brain focuses all its resources on something. Attention allows us to notice, select, and direct the brain’s resources. In other words, it is the leader of the brain.

Thing #2 – Wherever attention goes, the rest of the brain follows.

When a child is able to direct his attention, he is controlling where his brain puts its resources.

Attention is the brain’s boss.

Why is attention important?

Attention collects what your child needs to know and funnels it to his brain.

Regardless of the mode through which information is delivered, children must first pay attention to it in order to remember it.

When they pay attention towards one thing they have removed their attention from another because attention is indivisible.

Thing #3 – The mind can select only one stimulus, at a time, to which it pays attention. Our brains are limited.

Without attention, learning cannot be effective. Sustained attention is vital to learning because it allows the child to engage in a task long enough to repeatedly practice it, thus, reinforcing its memory in his brain.

Children with attention issues may not recall what they’ve been taught. The reason being that the information never “got into their head” in the first place.

Steps to paying attention

For attention to be directed and sustained the following steps must be taken:

1. Be alert
   • Your child needs to be awake, observant and prepared to take in information.
   • Adequate sleep, nutritious food, and decreased stress contribute greatly to a child’s alertness.
2. Choose what to pay attention to
   • There is an abundance of information bombarding your child, from the time he enters his classroom. He must choose to give his focus to his teacher and the tasks assigned to him.
3. Ignore distractions
   • If cars are zooming by on the road near the classroom, or dogs are barking across the street, your child must be able to keep out those distractions and keep his focus on the teacher’s lesson or his class activity.
4. Shift focus
   • When unavoidable noises or disturbances occur near the classroom, your child must be able to look at what’s going on, then shift his focus back to the teacher and the lesson.

Thing #4 – When a child learns to direct his attention, it increases his creativity, learning, and mental development.

What are the signs of attention problems?

If your child has challenges with attention, he may:

• Not attend to a task when required or requested to do so.
• Miss details in lessons and/or instructions.
• Repeatedly makes the same mistakes (due to not hearing thus not learning because of a lack of attention).
• Be unable to listen to all of the information presented.
• Find it physically difficult to either calm down (as he is too physically active) or to ‘wake up’ so he appears sleepy and lethargic. Not flexible.
• Begin a task but then get distracted by something else and then ‘forget’ to complete the original task.
• Have difficulty learning new skills.

Attention is an important mental process – it is based in the brain. Other mental processes, like imagination and thinking cannot occur without it. It is impossible to think about anything unless your child concentrates his attention on it.

Thing #5 – Whereas paying attention in class not only benefits the student but also shows respect for the teacher, the child may not be inattentive on purpose.

The good news is that it is possible to train the brain to pay better attention. I’ll talk about some of the ways that can be done in my next article.

Have you or your child struggled with attention?