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Experienced parents talk about how to develop cognitive control in children, teach them not to interrupt adults and entertain them in the store so that they can finish shopping calmly.
1. How to wean him to interrupt adults?
“Our five-year-old Senya loves to talk and questions pour out of him,” says Nadezhda. – On the one hand, it makes me very happy, but periodically it pisses me off. When I talk to a friend or my husband and I finally sit down for a little chat after work, the son is right there: he stands next to him and starts: “Mom, mom, mom, mom …”.
Last week I got into a conversation in the park with a familiar mother. Her three-year-old son came up to us and wanted to say something. But instead of interrupting, he simply put his hand on her stock and waited. My friend put her hand on his to let him know that she noticed, and we continued talking.
When she finished saying what she wanted to say, she turned to the baby and turned her full attention to him. I was shocked. So simple! And so much respect for the child, and for the parent, and the person with whom you are talking. Her son only had to wait a minute before his mother finished her sentence.
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- “Moms, do you get tired of your children?”
Senya and I tried this technique and my son really liked it too! Now he prides himself on being able to wait patiently and is delighted with the secret code he can now use.”
2. How to increase his self-discipline?
Many parents, looking at their child, think, not without bitterness, how to make him sit still for at least five minutes. Just turn on the TV. When will he finally become diligent and purposeful?
The ability not to be distracted not only by external stimuli (a classmate makes faces), but also by internal ones, for example, the thought “I won’t succeed” is called “cognitive control”. Cognitive control is essential when we work with mental information. This is the ability to keep a phone number in mind while dialing it, plan the next move in chess or weigh all the pros and cons in some choice, suppress irritation and restrain impulsive inadequate reactions.
“Ten years ago it was thought that self-control, just like intelligence, was born—you either have it or you don’t,” says Poe Bronson, a parenting and education expert and father of a preschool daughter. – Now scientists are inclined to believe that these qualities are flexible and amenable to training. When children plan and set goals (for an hour, for a day, for a week), the part of the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is responsible for concentration and development of plans, is strengthened.1
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In addition, children will not become distracted if they are completely absorbed in what they decide to do. In the 1950s, a study was conducted in the USSR. In one group, children were asked to stand still “for as long as they can.” Nobody got more than two minutes. The second group was told that they had to stand like sentries on duty, and the children stood for eleven minutes.
Motivation is of great importance, as it is accompanied by the release of dopamine in the brain, which improves communication between neurons. It turns out that when motivated, the brain works better and transmits signals faster. Accordingly, motivated children learn faster and better.
Three exercises that help develop self-discipline.
- Before the class begins, the children write plans for what they are going to achieve during the two-hour class. If children are distracted, they need to be reminded of what is written in their plans.
- When kindergarteners learn to write, teach them to say first out loud, and then silently, what they are doing: “We start the letter at the top and draw a semicircle.”
- Point not to the word in which the child made a mistake, but to the line where this word is located, so that the child finds the mistake himself.
Thanks to this approach, children become more attentive, begin to think, and not mechanically do what their teacher asks.
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- Why do we need to be authoritative
3. What to do with her in the store?
You came with the baby to the supermarket. There is a long list in my head – I have to buy groceries for the week. You need to concentrate, and the child, as luck would have it, is naughty. “At one of those moments, a brilliant idea came to my mind,” the mother of three-year-old Matilda shares her experience. “I bought a box of baby cereal in the form of oatmeal rings, made a necklace out of them and hung them around my daughter’s neck. The necklace immediately absorbed all her attention. I got the necessary respite to go shopping, and the child is an interesting activity that also helps to develop motor skills.”2
This trick can be used when you need to keep the kids busy for thirty or forty minutes.
E. Murashova “Exam for parents”
Child psychologist Ekaterina Murashova offers us a collection of pedagogical (and psychological) tasks – real stories from her practice. Each is accompanied by answer options. Having chosen your option, you can look at the end of the book and find out which answer the psychologist considers correct.
1 Read more about this in Poe Bronson’s Parenting Myths: Science vs. Intuition (Mann, Ivanov, and Ferber, 2014).
2 For more information, see Raising Miss Matilda, an English-language blog run by her mother (raisingmissmatilda.com).