WHAT IS ATTENTION?
Attention is the ability to maintain focus on a task for a certain period of time. When a child is not paying attention, avoids challenging tasks, has poor eye-contact or other behavioral issues, we adults often pay a lot of attention to symptoms, it is sometimes difficult to see that there are actually root causes underlying these behaviors. Since our brain is the control-center, if a child’s certain core foundations are weak then they would not be successful in
activities that require the use of these foundations. And we all know that every child wants to be happy. So when a child is faced with a challenging task that they know they cannot perform in, it is then naturally that they would want to avoid it, make excuses or display behavioral symptoms, which we adult see as “attention” issues. These foundations are:
- 1. Auditory Processing
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If a developing child’s brain is processing at a rate that is slower than speech sound (which happens in tens of milliseconds), they may miss certain sounds within a sentence. What a teacher says could then be different than what a student hears. For example, ‘b’ and ‘d’ both take 40 milliseconds long and sound very similar. If a student processes slower than this, they may not be able to tell the difference between these 2 sounds. Words with these sounds will not all make sense to them, and naturally they would not (be able to) pay attention to something that does not have any meaning.
- 2. Visual Processing
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If a child’s visual processing is slightly below-age, they will struggle with recognizing certain mathematical patterns, or find it difficult to follow complex diagrams. Students will easily lose focus and shift their attention to something else that they are better able to process. Very good visual processing skills are required to master concepts in math and science subjects.
- 3. Sensory-Motor Processing
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If sensory-motor skills are below-age, simple tasks like sitting, balancing, and activities that require the use of different foundations like playing the piano (visual-auditory-motor) will be very difficult- even the task of holding a pen steady and writing. This may make it difficult for a child to sit still for a length of time in class. It is then natural for the child to try and avoid the situation, move around or look for different activities that they can move around more. What we see then is a child who is inattentive and cannot focus on a task for very long.
- 4. Attention
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The ability to focus and pay attention to task over time including blockade distractions that interfere with concentration. Typically, children’s attention can happen at the appropriate age. But the children who cannot concentrate on their studies always show naughty behavior such as running around, easily to distract, daydream or not interested in learning.
BrainFit Studio Thailand offers a complete "Whole Brain Training" system to improve attention and strengthen critical and learning areas of your child’s brain:
SMART™ Moves: to strengthen the children’s Sensory-Motor brain pillars using a powerful proven and personalized gym-based program.
SMART™ Vision: to help them to quickly and accurately interpret the information received through their eyes, especially important in the classroom.
SMART™ Listening: to improve foundational cognitive skills, targeting underlying language and reading difficulties, and then improve reading fluency and comprehension for all students.
SMART™ Focus: to quickly retrains your child’s brain to think more clearly and attentively, at the same time block-out distractions.
SMART™ Emotion: to use your own knowledge of emotions to make decisions, to calm yourself down, to manage anger and conflict, to help you in your relationships with people, to know what is happening in social situations, and to assist you in many aspects of life where you or another person is involved.