Teach Your Child How to Concentrate: Maria Montessori’s Method
Maria Montessori, a dedicated and excellent teacher, wrote that the ability to concentrate is not a natural quality some children have and others lack, but a vital skill every child needs to practice. While children may be more or less distractible, every child can learn can learn to focus when his teachers and parents help him in the correct way. So here is what Maria Montessori had to say about how you can help your child, ADD/ADHD or not, concentrate:
1. Let them do what interests them
What Montessori meant by concentration is more than a normal ‘paying attention’, which according to psychologists qualifies us as normal. It is more like a total absorption of the mind, when the child works towards mastery of any freely-chosen task. This higher form of concentration happens only if he is allowed to work on what interests him. It helps him develop confidence in his own abilities and relate better to other people.
Don’t be too narrow in your choice of what is an interest worth pursuing for your child: if it can be useful in anyway at all, and it is not dangerous or unhealthy or a breach of etiquette, let him do it.
2. Let them move
Montessori designed her classrooms so that the children could choose what they wanted to do and do it in the most comfortable, natural positions. Her goal was to get their minds and bodies to work in harmony - one sign of concentration.
Children between the ages of two and four are interested in learning many physical skills - how to wash hands, how to comb, how to carry things and put them where they belong. By preventing or ‘helping’ them when they do these things, you disrupt this mind-body connection. And when mind and body do not work together, there is the distractibility and clumsiness so common in children with ADD/ADHD.
3. Let them help with real work
All children are interested in helping around the house when they are small, when their ‘help’ means actually more work for the mother and father. But if you are patient at this stage, and allow them to ‘help’ you and teach them how to do it, you give them practical experience in concentration (besides reaping for the rest of your life the benefits of cooperative children willing to do their chores).
These physical activities are naturally concentration-friendly, and for most children these are their first absorbing interests. If you allow them to clean a spill, or wear their own socks and shoes, or pour out their own milk or juice, when they desperately want to, you are helping their minds to fix on productive things.
4. Use lots of practical activity to teach
This multisensory way of teaching works well for anyone, and especially for ADD/ADHD children. You can incorporate practical, multisensory elements to anything you have to teach. Teach the alphabet using sandpaper letters or letter peg-puzzles. Once they learn to read, try using written words for everyday communication occasionally (’go close the door’, ‘bring me some water’).
Involving children in the care of pets, house plants, or gardens helps them learn the basics of science. Letting them measure out ingredients while you cook teaches them about numbers and quantities.
5. Don’t disturb them when they concentrate
This is a mistake parents and teachers make all the time. We say we want our children to concentrate, but when they do, from babyhood onwards, we constantly interrupt them. A child trying to squeeze out paste from a tube onto his brush, or lace his own shoes, or button his own coat, or even just transfer sand from bucket to bucket using his shovel, needs to be left alone to do it. If you observe carefully, you will see he is interested in mastering a skill rather than just trying to get a job done and, uninterrupted, even a child of two can spend up to fifteen minutes on a single pursuit.
The correct thing for an adult to do when a child is concentrating is to respect the child by not interrupting in any way - not to praise, or offer to help, or stare, or even correct mistakes. What works best when a child is concentrating is just ignoring him. If he asks for help, or shows that he wants your approval, then that is the time to correct (tactfully) or praise.
Maria Montessori has good advice for all parents and teachers, and she encourages us to take responsibility for ensuring that our children learn and grow to their full potential. You can read her books - The Absorbent Mind, The Secret of Childhood, The Discovery of the Child - for more about her philosophy and about the things you should make part of your parenting practice from the time your children are born. But her principles hold good from infancy to adulthood.
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