Distractible kids are sometimes difficult to deal with when you don’t have plans in place to deal with this problem. And unfortunately it is a common issue in most classrooms and some teachers just don’t know how to deal with this as at times they won’t even be able to notice it as an issue in the first place.
Why is your child easily distracted?
That’s the first thing to figure out. Why is your child distracted? Some possible distractions for kids:
- Sight- is their learning area too busy? Are there too many colors or things to see and look at?
- Sound- is the area too quiet or too loud? Some kids need quiet to concentrate, this is Batman. He needs relative quiet to concentrate. Others learn better if there is some amount of background noise or music to block out the other noises. While some need music of some sort, and tend to play classical music while they do school work helps them concentrate. Try with your kids to see if music helps or doesn’t help. Once you’ve checked on music, do they need words or no words?
- Textures- this is becoming a more common issue, but are they bothered by the feel of their chair, their clothes? What can you work to control in this area?
TIPS ON TEACHING DISTRACTIBLE KIDS
- Limit visual distractions. We all love the educational posters and visual reminders, but that could be overwhelming for your child, try taking them down, and see if that helps.
- Give them a fidget. Kathy Kuhl defined a fidget as a small toy or item your child can fiddle with to help them concentrate. Some rules she suggested, it has to be small, it has to help, it has to not distract the teacher, it has to not make noise.
- Take breaks, adults benefit from short breaks, so of course our distractible kids will as well, breaks of usually 20 – 30 minutes help.
- Set timers, we could write a whole post on using timers This can help them see how much time they have left.
- Cover up the problems they are not working on. Sometimes while working through work that is listed, looking at questions on the next page puts some kids in panic state.
- Have your kids draw how distracted they are throughout the day so you can find their best working time. Maybe they concentrate best in late afternoon, so plan the hard stuff then.
STRATEGIES FOR OLDER DISTRACTIBLE KIDS
Just because your child is older doesn’t mean they are suddenly able to concentrate better, take a look at a few ways to deal with this also
- Teach them how to break a big project down into steps. As they get older we expect more and they become daunted by the sheer amount of work.
- Teach them how to use planners and calendars. Teach your distractible kids this over and over and over again. Then come back to it from a different way.
- Look into audio books, this is a great plan for those kids who just don’t concentrate to read, they can draw, exercise, or CLEAN while listening. This is a great motivator for some kids to clean if they can listen to an audio book.
- Set your own rules. Don’t just look to the public school rules, look for how you can set your child up for success.