Do you ever notice that your kids sit down to dig into some type of schoolwork and before you know it, they are distracted by one thing or another? Maybe it’s the technology…the phone or iPad, maybe it’s the dog across the room or the fly on the wall…attention is fragile that way because when our kids sit down to learn something new, the brain releases stress neurochemicals that …can make them antsy.
When you think about it, adults are no different. In the workplace, most people spend a great deal of time in distraction. You sink into a project and before long it begins to feel daunting so you pick up your phone to check your email, you open social media, just to see what you might have missed in the last half-hour, you make sure no one’s text messaged you or maybe… it’s time for a snack. Honestly, most of us dip in and out of distraction all day long searching desperately for that next hit of dopamine, the feel-good brain chemical that rewards us for stimulation, for novelty.
While distraction serves as a nice pressure release, there’s a cost. That cost comes in the form of precious time that we have to spend to get ourselves out of the distraction and back into the desired task. And once we’re back into the desired task… in comes the struggle and we’re hunting for another distraction, interrupting any quality work we might accomplish.
We are training our brain to go in search of higher stimulation, to hurry through, to fill the uncomfortable spaces with anything more interesting than the task at hand, adding to our stressed state in the end because we didn’t get the work done that we were setting out to do in the first place. And what do we do when we feel stressed…we look for a distraction to make ourselves feel better.
Instead of stepping into the distraction, lean into the frustration. Embrace the struggle and persist through it to the other side where flow awaits. Remember, flow is that optimal state where your child feels best and performs best and It can just take minutes to get there. Over the next few weeks we are going to discuss tips and examples to help our kids tune in to focus.
Here are several ideas to stack to help kids stay in the struggle.
- Pay attention to the precursors of good learning or what I generally call wellbeing. Make sure kids are getting enough sleep, nutrition and exercise to perform at their very best. When we’re tired or hungry, we drift towards easy, mindless tasks as it’s much easier to be a consumer rather than producer.
- Eliminate environmental distraction, such as noise, movement, visual stimuli and for some kids even disarray. Anything that provides novelty attracts the brain and drains precious energy that could be used for learning goals. Ignoring things in our environment exhausts us. It’s similar to wearing battery operated headphones and the more you use them, the less and less battery power we have. Distraction = Depletion.
- Make boring less boring and don’t waste your dopamine on distractions. To do this you might lower the baseline for stimulation resulting in a prolonged ability to focus. We can change the perception of boring by lowering the bar for excitement. Instead of starting to write an essay after watching TikTok for hours, try writing that essay after sitting outside looking into the clouds or being in nature for an hour. The more our kids can slow it down and learn to sit with boredom, the easier it will be for them to resist the pull of distraction and get themselves into flow. Extreme levels of stimulation cause us to become desensitized to dopamine, so we need bigger and bigger hits to feel engaged. Lower the baseline to awaken dopamine receptors.
There are more tips to come, so for now…think about these ideas and…happy boldschooling!
