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Bright Kids Who Can't Keep Up: Help Your Child Overcome Slow Processing Speed and Succeed in a Fast-Paced World

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Shared via Kindle. Description: Do you find yourself constantly asking your child to "pick up the pace"? Does he or she seem to take longer than others to get stuff done--whether completing homework, responding when spoken to, or getting dressed and ready i...

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Growth Mindset (1 of 5) | Social Emotional Learning for kids

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Concentration is like a muscle that requires regular exercise to strengthen. Some kids are born "stronger" in this area than others, but all kids can learn strategies and engage in practices that help improve their ability to focus and sustain their attention. This is, after all, a very important skill for kids to acquire-school demands that students concentrate for long stretches of time, and as kids get older they have extracurricular activities after school that require even more concentration. Most children are able to concentrate on activities that are fun and intrinsically enjoyable. It's the ones that are more boring, difficult or just less enjoyable that really challenge their focus. Yet this ability to concentrate and sustain attention on all kinds of tasks is crucially important, because it helps kids learn and improve, which leads to self-confidence and positive self-esteem.

Concentration is a lot like mindfulness, a concept that has been receiving quite a bit of attention lately in psychology and in popular culture. Mindfulness is basically the ability to pay attention to one thing in the moment, and it has been shown to have innumerable mental health benefits, from increased happiness and stress management to improved academic and test performance. For mindfulness to work, you have to focus.

Here are some tips to help your kids build their concentration muscles:

1. Set aside a reasonable amount of time for your child to practice focusing on a specific task. Young children (age 4-5) can usually concentrate for somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on the task-less time with novel and challenging tasks, and more time with those intrinsically enjoyable activities.

2. Do one thing at a time. We may praise the ability to multitask in our adult lives, but the research is clear: multitasking reduces concentration and diminishes our performance. In line with the concept of mindfulness, do one thing at a time in this one moment. For very young children, you might simply sing the alphabet together while looking at the letters. For children who are a little older, say 4th grade, you can complete one long division problem at a time together. Don't look ahead at all the other problems, just focus on one at a time.

3. Set aside homework time and space. Because multitasking impairs concentration, it's important to reduce extraneous distractions. For example, do homework at a designated desk or table in a quiet room with the TV off, the phone in another room, and the laptop shut unless it's needed to complete a homework assignment. Parental monitoring programs can automatically shut down Internet access after a set amount of use. As kids get older, parents can shift to using self-monitoring software so teens can independently manage their time. This way kids don't get sucked into a time vortex on Instagram or Snapchat.

4. Build in planned breaks. Kids need to get up, move around, and do something different and not too taxing after spending some time concentrating. They will benefit from taking some time to rest and recharge, especially during after-school homework time. Younger children can take a snack or play break, and teens can take the opportunity to check out their friends' posts or text with peers.

5. Practice belly breathing. Steady, diaphragmatic breathing slows our heart rate and clears our mind so we can concentrate. This is an important skill for kids to have when they're confronted with challenging tasks, which can make them anxious and spike their heart rate. Anxiety leads to avoidance, the opposite of concentration. So finding ways to make tasks more approachable is important, and calming the body is one of those strategies.

6. Break big tasks down into smaller, more manageable pieces. This is another strategy for helping children to approach a challenging task. If your child is learning to tie her shoes, make the first goal to master the initial knot, then move on to making two loops with the strings until she knows exactly how to do that, and so forth. Another "piecemeal" strategy for building concentration is to use a timer to help kids organize themselves, e.g., "Here's a book about horses. I'm going to set this timer for 15 minutes, and I want you to write down as many facts about horses as you can in this time."

7. Practice observing things in the moment. Kids can be distracted by "internal stimuli," like physical sensations or entertaining memories. While a child's imagination is a wonderful thing, we also want them to be able to clear away distractions and build the ability to concentrate. You can play "I spy with my little eye..." and take turns making observations of various objects in the room, listen closely to the lyrics of a song together, or do some yoga poses and pay attention to how it feels in the body.

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Tips for Helping Your Child Focus and Concentrate

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Concentration is like a muscle that requires regular exercise to strengthen. Some kids are born "stronger" in this area than others, but all kids can learn strategies and engage in practices that help improve their ability to focus and sustain their attention.

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Children who struggle with executive functioning skills such as organization, planning, time management, and working memory perform much better when they have the assistance of a parent, teacher, or coach to help them apply these skills. This can be problematic when a child has five homework assignments due within two days and can't even figure out how to get started. Unfortunately, personal support is not always available to help children know how, when, and where effectively to use their executive functioning skills.

Fortunately there are a variety of powerful apps and technologies for improving executive functioning in children who may have weak executive functioning skills. While these apps will not transform children who walk around with a messy backpack filled with decaying, month-old lunches into highly organized and efficient people, they provide some support and scaffolding that can enhance children's overall executive functioning. The key is for parents and educators to identify areas of executive weakness and then to find apps that practice and support those skills. The following are five of our favorites for supporting planning, working memory, organization, and time management.

Planning - 30/30

30/30 is an app designed to help users prioritize and track the amount of time they spend on individual tasks or smaller parts of a larger undertaking. The app relies on the idea that individuals are more productive when taking short breaks in between work. Users can program a series of tasks into 30/30, timing how long they spend dedicating effort and moving on to a new task when the app indicates time has expired. Find out more in our . 30/30 app review

Working Memory App - Quizlet

Whether it's for memorizing literary terms or historical figures, flashcards are one of the most helpful learning tools. Quizlet is an app and a website that allows children to create their own digital flashcards so they can learn their terms and definitions. They app is great for studying on the go, while the online version is better for inputting the information. The app even offers mini-games to make the process more engaging. Flashcards can be organized by class and subject, making Quizlet one of the best apps for working memory. See our Quizlet review for all the information.

Organization App - YouNote!

YouNote! is a unique and creative take on traditional note-taking apps. This app allows users to take notes using a variety of different methods, ensuring that learners of all different types can stay organized. Users who benefit from learning visually can take advantage of YouNote!'s ability to take notes using hand-drawn images. For those who learn better from auditory cues, this app also allows users to take voice-recorded notes. Notes can be tagged and sorted for easy access later. This app can be extremely helpful for keeping track of important information from school, home, or the workplace. Discover more in our YouNote! . review

Organization App - Google Calendar

Google Calendar is software available from nearly any computer or mobile device that allows a single user or group of users to create and maintain a digital calendar of events. Keeping track of upcoming assignments, obligations, or important appointments through Google Calendar can help users keep a hectic and busy life organized. The program can be synced across multiple devices or shared with a group to ensure that everyone in the family, class, or workplace can stay organized and on the same page. Find out more in our Google Calendar review .

Time Management App - InClass

For a more academic approach to time management, consider downloading InClass . This scheduling app is geared towards middle-school, high-school, and college-aged students and lets users add class times, professors, homework, and due dates to their calendar. It is also a handy study tool, as it lets users attach recorded content, files, and notes to each reminder, For older kids starting to manage large school work loads, InClass offers an excellent way to help them stay on top of assignments. Check out our for all the details. InClass review

Randy Kulman, Ph.D. is the Founder and President of LearningWorks for Kids http://learningworksforkids.com/ , an educational technology company that specializes in using video games to teach executive-functioning and academic skills. For the past 25 years, Dr. Kulman has also been the Clinical Director and President of South County Child and Family Consultants, a multidisciplinary group of private practitioners that specializes in assessment and interventions for children with learning disorders and attention difficulties.

Additionally, Dr. Kulman is the author of numerous essays on the use of digital technologies for improving executive-functioning skills in children. His current research projects include the development of a parent and teacher scale for assessing executive-functioning skills in children and a large survey study examining how children with ADHD and Autism use popular video games and apps. He is an advisor and occasional writer for Commonsensemedia.org,and also writes columns for Inside ADHD and the . He is the author of two books; South County Independent and Train Your Brain for Success: A Teenager's Guide to Executive Functions Playing Smarter in a Digital World. Dr. Kulman can be contacted at randy@learningworksforkids.com.

In addition to these and other apps, our coaches have dozens of tools and strategies to help support students to improve Executive Function skills.

Click below to learn more!

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5 Must-Have Apps for Improving Executive Functioning in Children

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Children who struggle with executive functioning skills such as organization, planning, time management, and working memory perform much better when they have the assistance of a parent, teacher, or coach to help them apply these skills. This can be problematic when a child has five homework assignments due within two days and can't even figure out how to get started.

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10 Tools to Help Teachers Develop Executive Functioning Classroom Skills

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By Nicole Eredics Executive Function is a term given to a variety of cognitive processes (organization, working memory, ability to initiate tasks, switch focus or manage one's behavior) that allow students to learn and achieve goals. For some students, however, their level of executive function may interfere with their ability to succeed in school.

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Helping Kids Who Struggle With Executive Functions - Child Mind Institute

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Learning specialists discuss how to help kids who have problems with executive functions stay organized and on top of their responsibilities.

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Executive Functioning Issues: Strategies You Can Try at Home

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Here are strategies you can use at home to help your child with executive functioning issues improve memory, organization, time management and planning.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.