Welcome to Boldschoolers!
We’re talking about focus and how we can build that superpower.
What happens when we want our kids to focus when they really would rather be doing something else. Such a valuable question because we are all faced with this situation. For adults and kids alike, we sink into a project or we even just think about a project and before we know it…it feels hard or we anticipate it feeling hard. It feels like a struggle…frustration or anxiety starts to bubble up inside us and we are looking everywhere for a chance to release the pressure, to get away. This is a totally normal feeling and it’s important to realize that the first stage of the learning cycle is named the struggle stage…and it has that name for a reason. The key is to persist through the struggle and to work with our kids on how to do that.
The fact is that struggle is normal and if our kids can learn to persist through those minutes of uncomfortableness, we not only build grit, but flow awaits on the other side. Our kids will be served well if they can learn to lean into the struggle rather than quenching the uncomfortableness with a hit of dopamine in the form of a distraction. They will stand out from nearly everyone else that lives life from distraction to distraction. Someone that can focus and persist to meet goals through the struggle, through the frustration and uncomfortableness, is truly remarkable, they are unstoppable.
Here are some tips to stack the odds in our kids’ favor:
- As mentioned, learning is built on a foundation of wellbeing. Focus is very challenging if we are tired, hungry or out of sorts in some way. Focus is often compromised if the environment is noisy, distracting or if we are task switching or if there’s the presence of any negative self-talk. All of these things can drain our ability to focus right out of us.
- Have kids pick their own goals. When kids pick their own, meaningful goals the odds are stacked in the favor of ongoing interest and motivation. We need every possible advantage to be in our favor in order to persist through that struggle. Meaningful goals from our child’s perspective is key.
- Check to make sure the challenge/skill level is where it needs to be…not too hard and not too easy… and that we use kaizen to break down goals into very doable bits.
- Partner with kids to offer emotional support or to take the edge off of too high a challenge. Superpower time isn’t about flying through learning…easy peasy…it’s about building grit to hang tight when the going gets rough and that’s built very, very slowly with lots of grace, positivity and optimism. It may take the form of you sitting nearby to offer emotional support, your child leaning into you for feedback or partnering of some type, or your child learning when to ask for a brain break, but ultimately striving and doing their best to lean into the frustration, increasing their superpower, knowing that flow is on the other side.
Happy Boldschooling!
