Nurturing Children’s Attention Skills

Attention skills are central to children’s development in multiple domains, affecting their learning, social engagement, and even performance in school and the workplace in a long run. In the seminar, Michelle Kong, an educational psychologist, introduced young children’ development milestones in attention skills, parents’ role in such development, as well as, the strategies parents could use at home to nurture children’s attention skills.Some points were shared during the seminar:

• The interaction between children’s factors, family factors and environmental factors has an important impact on children’s attention skills
• Children’s factors include their physiological and psychological development; thus, eating healthy, sleeping right and exercising properly are crucial
• When planning for activities and designing the play areas, parents shall keep a balance between “repeated exposure and limited stimulation” and “new toys and novel experience”, considering children’s abilities, current states and responses
• Children’s “inattentive behaviors” might reflect their unspoken needs. In order to understand and respond to their needs, parents shall observe children’s body language (such as facial expressions, gaze and gestures) and the preceding and subsequent events