Suggestions for a 5 year old girl who has trouble focusing
My daughter turned 5 in July this year and started Kindergarten 2 months ago. She loves school and seems to be learning a lot but struggles to focus on her task at hand and also with getting her tasks done in a timely manner. The same applies to her homework. Really difficult to keep her motivated and focused. Does anyone have any suggestions?
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First, you might want to ask your daughter's teacher if her focus problems are comparable or not to other students. Sometimes, parents put a little too much trust in the schools, thinking they wouldn't assign this amount and type of work if it wasn't motivating and easy to complete for most students. You might be surprised how many children are having the same kinds of problems as your daughter.
I've done quite a bit of research on this, as my son was having severe enough focus problems at school that we teach him at home now. A quote from this recent article sums up fairly well what your daughter likely needs.
He needs more time to play and move his body. Fifteen minutes of recess is not enough. I recommend an hour-long recess session everyday.
Do you know what the school's response to that suggestion was? They laughed, because they didn't think they could possibly make the time, even though it would have vastly improved the student's ability to focus all day. Some of the best school systems in the world give students a 10-15 minute break every hour.
Aside from petitioning the school for longer recesses and no homework, what can you do? Give your daughter time for physical play in the morning, and after school before any homework. Homework tends to be the most rote work of the day, and is expected to be done at a time of day when kids are already burned out, so take that into account. Give her a break for physical activity after about every 10-15 minutes of homework.
Try to modify the assignments to better fit her interests. Kindergarten teachers assign homework for a variety of reasons. It might be as specific as needing to get better at recognizing certain sight words, or as vague as wanting to get parents involved. Those reasons can often be fulfilled with different work than the boring stuff they send home. My son often outright refused the school's writing assignments. We worried he might have dyslexia or something. Turns out, if you let him write about ninjas or robots, he will do it for hours.
Try to keep things fun and light, break tasks up in to smaller more manageable tasks so she feels like she's not getting swamped and can tick them off the list as she goes.
Maybe you could look at adhd-inattentive symptoms:
(Sometimes a change of diet, low sugar, good sleep patterns might help too. kids can learn to focus, breaking down tasks helps a lot, especially if its kept fun! and not stressful)
adhd-inattentive symptoms:
Shift from task to task without finishing anything
Become easily distracted
Miss important details
Make careless mistakes in homework and tests
Get bored quickly
Have trouble getting organized, for example losing homework assignments or
keeping the bedroom messy and cluttered
Don't seem to listen when spoken to
Daydream
Are slow to understand information
Have trouble following instructions
anyway hope it helps
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