Attention problems

 

What is attention?

Attention is the ability to obtain and sustain appropriate attention to a task. This can be influenced by motivation, self-esteem, sensory integration, practice, language difficulties and any existing diagnosis.

How are you able to tell if my child has problems with attention?

If a toddler has difficulties attentively they might:

• Not attend to a task when required/requested to try to to so.
• Miss details in instructions.
• Repeatedly makes an equivalent mistakes (due to not learning from past attention).
• Be unable to concentrate to all or any of the knowledge presented.
• Find it physically difficult to either settle down (as they're too physically active) or to ‘wake up’ as they seem sleepy and lethargic.
• Begins a task on the other hand gets distracted by something else then ‘forgets’ to finish what was asked of them.

What are often done to enhance attention?

• Repeat instructions: once you have given an instruction to a toddler , encourage them to repeat it back to you to make sure that the kid has grasped/understood what's expected.
• Sensory Integration therapy: To addresses attention difficulties that are sensory in nature.
• Eye contact: Get on the brink of the kid to make sure they're ready to hear you and see your face; get right down to their level.
• Simple language: Use clear, specific language when making requests and, if necessary, show them what you would like them to try to to .
• Reduce background noise and distractions: to assist a toddler maintain attention long enough to understand the knowledge required to finish a task.
• Develop Receptive Language: Improve your child’s receptive language (i.e. understanding of language) in order that they're better ready to understand expectations and knowledge and are therefore better ready to answer information.

What activities can help improve attention?

• Sensory diet activities such as:

Obstacle courses of physical tasks like the below:
Wheelbarrow walking
Animal walks
Trampolining
Cycling and scooting
Swings (forward and back, side to side, rotary)
Rough and tumble play / squishing or sandwiching with pillows or balls
Wearing an important backpack
Weighted items (wheat bag on lap while sitting or heavy blanket for sleep)
Chewy toys

• Engine (Alert) program is that the use of well considered individually tailored and consciously planned sensory motor (physical) activities to assist achieve self regulation and better attention.
• Discrete skills: Activities that have an outlined start and end point like puzzles, construction tasks, mazes, and dot to dots.
• Narrowly focused tasks: Activities that are very specific and need very focused attention such has sorting, organizing and categorizing activities (e.g. card games like Uno, Snap or Blink).
• Visual schedules enable a toddler to ascertain and understand what's getting to happen next. Schedules also help people to organize themselves, to plan ahead and thus to attention more effectively as they know the top is coming.
• Timers (ideally visual) help with transitions as they tell the kid for a way long and once they are getting to need to do an activity. Timers allow us to pre-warn the kid that a task or demand is coming.
• Talking/question counters: For a discrete period of your time where the kid is engaged in an activity, implement a structure that provides the kid a limited number of questions or statements that they will ask/make. Give them (for example) 5 ‘talking’ counters. whenever the kid asks a question/makes a press release the adult takes a counter from them. When the kid has no more counters, adults don't respond and therefore the child learns to carry onto questions or statements and learns when to ask.
• Auditory processing: Gradually increase the quantity of distraction whilst your child completes a task. Start by doing the task in silence, then introduce ‘white noise’ (e.g. static on the radio), then serious music , then commercial talk back radio and eventually with conversation between others within the room.
• The Listening Program: Helps develop a child’s attention skills by teaching them the way to attend to an activity whilst taking note of specifically designed ‘therapeutic’ serious music .