How do we help our children increase concentration and develop a wider attention span? What benefit does increasing concentration bring?

Concentration is about focused attention. It is the ability to direct attention to the exclusion of everything else. When the mind is focused, our energy is not dissipated onto irrelevant thoughts, but focused. clear and direct. This skill is essential for success. Without it, our efforts are scattered.

Concentration assists us in study and understanding - improves our memory, and helps us focus on the task, activity or goal, so that we become more efficient. We can gain mastery over our worries and thoughts and therefore become more emotionally resilient.

In today's busy lifestyle, with the prospect of an organized activity to enhance every waking moment, children would appear to have every opportunity for developing increased concentration.

However, the opposite is often true. Instead of deeper concentration and attention spans, our children's minds leap in short, focused bursts from one activity to the next as parents listen to the common catch cry - this child needs more stimulation!

Yes, stimulation is absolutely necessary, but so is calm, relaxed, un-pressured clear space to play, largely unobserved and unmeasured.

When children trust that they have plenty of time, they relax and let go into their free play, and completely exist in that moment of time. The past and future fall away as they concentrate in the relaxed free flow of the present.

Ever called to your children when they were absorbed in play and watched them pay no attention to you at all?

They often really do not hear you - all their concentration is going into their current focus.

This amount of relaxed concentration is what exponents of meditation often take many years and much practice to learn.

Help your children to retain and to develop this valuable skill. How?

Time

Provide your children with the gift of time for relaxing, free play. Time is a concentration aid - when we become totally absorbed and lost within an activity our concentration is humming at 100%.

Watch your children when they are immersed in an activity and you can clearly witness their concentrated, fully focused attention span. They need to know they have all the time in the world available to them so they can relax and let go into their imaginations.

Try suggesting to them during the school holidays to take all day to set up an activity, such as playing schools, shops, libraries, then tell them to just leave it without tidying it away, and continue to play on with it over the next few days. This precious, extended play allows our children to just be.

Basic Physical Needs

Along with a well balanced diet and sound bedtime routines, children need plenty of exercise to release negative energy buildup and to provide increased energy through fitness. Fit and healthy children have higher rates of concentration.

Electronic Games

In moderation, electronic games provide extended periods of concentrated brain activity. Many children are able to spend long periods of time totally absorbed in on line activities and game boys which develop many skills when used with care and help increase concentration.

Silence

Encourage your children to be comfortable with silence. Explain that being able to sit still and find a place of inner stillness will help them to develop and increase concentration and enhance their attention span. Give them something to concentrate on, a tree, flower, view, memory, photo or book and encourage them to enjoy the silence alongside you from an early age.

Posture and Breathing

Teach your children how to stand erect and tall, and to breathe correctly into their diaphragm. Shallow breathing prevents a good flow of oxygen into the bloodstream. Encourage your children into activities that promote good breathing such as music skills, singing, sport and exercise. Children's yoga or gymnastic classes can prove invaluable for teaching both correct posture and controlled breathing.

Encourage Reading

Continue to read aloud to your children regularly as well as encouraging them to read to you. Promote reading as a bedtime wind down activity rather than having a television in your child's room.

It takes effort and patience to help Increase concentration in your children, but the benefits are outstanding for their future emotional resilience and self confidence.