Speaker 1does this situation resonate your child has been sitting at the homework table for 45 minutes the pencil case is arranged with unusual precision they've sharpened three pencils they've asked for a drink of water twice they've done everything except the actual work or maybe your teenager swears they've been revising they've had their notes out their highlighters out their revision guide open but when you ask them a question about what they've been studying they can't tell you because somewhere between the open book and the actual thinking the concentration just didn't happen or perhaps your primary schooler simply cannot sit still you're not asking for an hour you're asking for 15 minutes and still every few seconds something else has caught their attention and they're off you've tried bribery you've tried timers you've tried removing every possible distraction and somehow they found a new one and you're quietly beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with your child or with you because nothing seems to work now here's what professor sam was one of the uk's leading neuroscientists specializing in attention and concentration wants you to know and it's probably not what you think it is helps is probably not what you've been trying so in this episode what we'll cover are going to be three things that you can do differently this week that will genuinely change how your child focuses not by demanding more effort but by working with the way their brain actually works i'm dr mary hann psychologist and parenting expert this is how not to screw up your kids podcast boy self a cuppa find a comfy seat and let's do it week's episode is a companion to thursday's deeper dive episode with professor sam was one of the uk's leading researchers on children's attention concentration and the neuroscience of focus so if you haven't yet listened to that episode i would really encourage you to and we will have the link in the show notes it's full of genuinely surprising science that will change maybe how you see your child's distractibility i learned so much from this episode i'm dr mary hann so much now but if you're here because you need something practical today you're in the right place and then head over and listen to the longer episode so first of all let's talk about the bucket you'll know the bucket analogy by now if you've been listening for a while if you're new let me explain every child and every one of us as adults has a bucket that fills throughout the day worries frustrations demands social pressures sensory overwhelm all of it adds up and fills our bucket and when the bucket gets full it overflows and that overflow looks like meltdowns shut down tears or a kind of blank staring at a page that no amount of encouraging will shift now here's what professor vas's research adds to this picture stress doesn't just fill the bucket it directly impairs the ability to concentrate so when a child is in a stressed or anxious state their brain goes into threat detection mode and so the part of the brain that's responsible for sort of goal-orientated concentration and tasks that frontal cortex behind your forehead gets overridden by the part of the brain that's too busy scanning the environment for danger so their attention gets pulled towards movement noise unpredictability anything that might be a threat not because they're being difficult because that's exactly what a stressed brain is designed to do it's designed to protect so if your child is struggling to focus the first question worth asking isn't how do i make them concentrate instead it's what's in their bucket and what might be keeping them in hyper vigilance now the three strategies that we're going to focus on today work best to help them focus on what's in their bucket and what might be helping them focus on what's in their bucket and what might be helping them focus on what's in their bucket on a reasonably empty bucket but they also do help to reduce how much the the task itself puts into the bucket and so let's start let me just name the three strategies and then we'll go and then i'll tell you a little bit about why they work and then we'll look at each one in turn so the three that we're going to go through are number one start it with them just five minutes number two build the understanding before you demand the focus number three audit the environment now before we go deep dive into each strategy let me explain a little bit about why they work i want to explain the neuroscience behind all three of these strategies because once you understand it these strategies stop feeling like tricks and actually really start feeling like like obvious sense like why why wouldn't i do this now professor vassis describes two kinds of strategies that are going to help them focus on what's in their bucket and there's listening concentration this is the kind of tuning into information coming at you either from us as parents talking to our children or like a teacher speaking in a classroom and then there's doing concentration which is different and doing concentration requires that you hold a goal an objective in your mind while simultaneously working through a series of steps to get there like sitting down to write an essay or revise a book or something like that and then there's learning concentration which is different and doing concentration requires that you hold a goal an exam now both of these happen in the frontal cortex that the higher order executive part of our brain that sits behind our forehead and the frontal cortex is the last part of the brain to develop and we know that full maturity doesn't happen really until our children hit adulthood in their mid-20s so when your 10 year old loses the thread of what they were doing the moment something catches their eye and they're distracted this isn't a discipline problem it's actually a it's developmental reality the other thing we need we ought to know and this is what makes these three strategies really make sense is that concentration isn't just about effort and willpower it's enormously dependent on two things number one how well your child understands the material and number two how much the environment that they're seated in when they're going to do this work is competing for their attention both of these things are the same thing and they're things that we can actually influence so how do we use these strategies one by one so let's just start with the first one which is start with them just for five minutes one of professor vass's colleagues has adhd and sam talked about this as part of the episode the longer thursday episode and this colleague has found that one thing that makes all the difference when he's about to get started on a task that he's struggling with is if if he just literally asks someone to sit down and start it with him just for five minutes not to do it for him not to explain it but just to be there side by side for the first five minutes the reason why this works is actually neurological when a child is staring at a blank page their frontal cortex the executive functioning bit has nothing to hook onto there's no map of the task no initial understanding no framework yet for where the goal even is and that's when avoidance kicks in the pencil sharpening the water requests the sudden discovery that their shoe has an interesting lace but once you sit down together and get the first few lines written the first problem started the paragraph underlined something shifts there's a foothold the brain has something to hold on to and from that point many children can then continue on their own so try this this week if this is the step that you're going to go with next time your child is stuck at the starting line sit down with them for five minutes without any agenda you're not coaching you're not prompting unless they ask just start it together then quietly step back you might be surprised how often that's all it takes so that's number one that you can try and of course if you're not sure what you're doing you can try and if you're not sure what you're doing you can try and if you're not sure my suggestion as always is that you just try one and try that consistently before you move on to another so the second one is build the understanding before you demand the focus and this is probably the most in sort of the most important insight from professor vass's research and the one i think most changes how we approach homework and revision concentration follows understanding not the other way around let me just say that again because it's it's a it's almost counterintuitive concentration follows understanding not the other way around so when a child understands they can concentrate they don't concentrate in order to be able to understand it is the other way around so when a child understands what they're being asked to engage with when they have some existing knowledge to slot new information into like tag it on they're not going to be able to understand their brain finds it significantly easier easier to focus. Because concentration isn't just about keeping the goal in mind. It's also about the brain predicting what's coming next. And when the context is familiar, when they're familiar with the content that they're kind of expanding on, the predictions then come much more easily. When it's completely unfamiliar, absolutely everything is effortful. This is also, by the way, one of the neurological reasons why children with ADHD can play video games for hours without distraction. They understand those games so deeply, their brain isn't working hard to keep up. It's working with material. It knows well. So in practice, what do we do? So before you sit your child down to revise or do homework, spend two or three minutes activating that existing knowledge. So you might say, tell me everything and anything you already know about this topic. What do you remember? From last week's lesson, what is this question actually asking for? That brief warm-up dramatically lowers the effort concentration requires. And if the content clearly makes no sense to them at all, then more time at the desk won't fix it anyway. So we want to find the gap in understanding first. So just taking those steps back. And it's a strategy that I've talked about previously. It's almost like taking that step back so that you build, something that they already know that boosts their confidence, gives them that foundation, and then we can do more. So that's number two. And then number three is about auditing the environment. Now, Professor Vass has spent considerable time advising the UK Department of Education on screen time. And one of his key findings is this. Our brains are hardwired to pay attention to movement. It is ancient, it is automatic, and it's almost impossible to override because it evolved as a threat detection mechanism. Movement anywhere in the visual field signals possible danger. So our brains are wired to look, because obviously our brain's fundamental primary goal is to keep us safe. Now, what this means in practice is that screens, any screens, even just a phone face down on the desk, are constantly competing for your child's attention. A television on in the background, a phone that vibrates, someone walking through the room. These aren't mild inconveniences. They are activating one of the most hardwired attention systems in the brain. And crucially, Professor Sam Vass's research shows that background noise and environmental distraction are significantly more disruptive to children who are anxious or who don't understand the environment. And so, I think it's important to keep that in mind. The material wealth, because of course that makes them anxious and stressed. So the children who can least afford distraction are the most affected by it. So the audit is simple. Before your child sits down to focus, screens off and out of sight, not just on silent, out of sight. Background noise minimized, a consistent familiar place to work. So the environment itself becomes almost like this cue, this nudge for concentration. And for younger children, it's almost like a cue to concentrate. Especially where, especially it's that predictability. Now the same routine, the same place, the same start time, young brains concentrate best when everything else is familiar. I know that this can be problematic when we're in busy households. We don't have multiple rooms that we can segue children into. But if you are pulling your hair out with a child who is very easily distracted and who is struggling to focus, then it's about our ability to concentrate. Are there ways that you can maneuver where children are at various periods of time so that you can then provide the sort of the most audited environment for, and distraction-less environment for your child? Because yes, that's going to require a huge amount of effort and orchestration of children in different rooms or different parts of the house. But it could be such a significant impact in terms of your child's confidence as they begin to be able to concentrate. So we need to build that ability to focus and to concentrate. Now, there are two things that I want you to watch out for when you are implementing these strategies. And the first one is expecting these strategies to work when the bucket is full. If your child is already anxious, already exhausted, already dysregulated, these strategies might help in the margins, but they're not enough on their own. A full bucket means that that frontal cortex is already competing with the rest response. So we want regulation first, focus after. Now, the second thing to look out for is confusing the appearance of concentration with actual focus. So a child can look like they're concentrating, sitting quietly, notes out, eyes on the page, and be completely elsewhere. This is what Professor Vass describes as the mind wandering of under arousal. And it's particularly common in and particularly easy to miss. So if your child is sitting still, but can't tell you anything that they've just read or done, the question isn't, why aren't you concentrating? It's, is this material making any sense to you? Now, let's put it all together. So here are your three strategies for this week. Start it with them, just five minutes, no coaching, no pressure, just sit down and begin together, then step back. Number two, build the understanding, before you demand the focus. Two minutes activating what they already know will save 30 minutes or longer of staring at the page. And then the third one is audit the environment. Screens out of sight, background noise reduced as much as is possible, a consistent and familiar place to work. Now, none of these are about demanding more effort from your child. All of them are about working with how their brain actually builds concentration, rather than expecting them to override it. My give this week is going to be a simple one-page focus setup guide, the environmental checklist, and five questions to activate prior knowledge before any study session. Suitable for primary school children right through to GCSEs. To grab that, head over to my free resource library at drmaryhand.com forward slash library. All you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access, not only to this week's resource, but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes. And if you found this episode useful, please do share it with another parent, especially any parent you know who is currently pulling their hair out over homework. So until next time. Bye.
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