Learning to Pay Attention

[bookbard]

Just read a really interesting article about people who have great memories, and the psych interviewed said the secret is really paying attention.

Now, I think a lot of people are just born with it. But what strategies do you think work for teaching a kid to really pay attention, to ignore distractions? I mean, it's something we verbalise a lot. Staring contests? Learning poems off by heart?

[HomeAgain]

We do not naturally have long attention spans in our house.  For us, it's a lot of different activities.  We listen to short pieces of music to really hear each note and how they're played (Suzuki violin). We play games of putting 20 items on a tray and then figuring out which is missing. We do Understood Betsy as a read aloud, and the part where she's asked to describe something she has seen is a good jumping off point for practicing the same skill. We do poetry memorization and narration and art studies.

[gardenmom5]

It's also the ability to form memories. there are several in this house who struggle to retain information.  It's not about not paying attention, it just doesn't "register".