Dawdling over work

Pay close attention to the child, watch her as you read or while she works. If you see her gaze drifting, her eyes glassing over, getting fidgety, or whatever clues she gives you that let you know you’re losing her full attention, stop the lesson. Once you recognize her clues, you’ll be able to stop the lesson BEFORE she has a chance to display that behavior. This helps to develop the habit of attention. Dawdling shouldn’t occur if you are watching for these signs and moving quickly to the next lesson before the child has a chance to lose focus, which leads to dawdling. 

You can also have a talk with the child about attention. Something like, “I’ve noticed that you are having some trouble staying focused on your work. When you gaze out the window (or stop listening to me, or whatever), you’re missing out on the exciting things that we’re learning. It’s so sad to miss out on these wonderful stories because I’m only going to read this to you one time. If you miss it, that is so sad! I want you to try extra hard to listen carefully (or stay focused on your math, finish this word, etc.). I’ll do my best to help you, but you are responsible for the work you get done. Can you try very hard to get your work done?”

Charlotte said that we must enlist our child’s will. Nagging them doesn’t do anything. If they don’t make the conscious choice to give their full attention to whatever they’re doing, then there’s nothing we can do to force them. They have to strengthen their will to make that choice over and over until it becomes second nature.

If you’re dealing with some special needs and challenges which make attention difficult, this is where short lessons are your best friend! If you have to begin with 2 minutes of reading before you ask for a narration, start there and build upon it a minute at a time, week by week. I find it is best to watch time more than number of pages or problems completed. It has taken my children 15 minutes to complete 5 math problems when they were learning a new skill, such as long division or borrowing in subtraction. If I wouldn’t allow them to be finished with math until a certain number of pages or problems were completed, they might have been at it for an hour or more–by which point their attention would certainly be gone and there would be lots of dawdling!

Remember also, that listening and full attention looks very different for each child. For example, my dd listens best when she has something in her hands to move around, such as Silly Putty or Play Doh. This used to drive me crazy because I assumed she wasn’t listening since she wasn’t looking at me while I read. Then I figured out that if she was looking at me while I read, she wasn’t listening! Her best narrations started happening when I allowed her to learn in her own style, which means doing something quietly with her hands while being read to. My son is completely different. He can listen and give an excellent narration whether he’s looking at me, laying down, staring out the window, or playing with Play Doh. It just doesn’t make any difference to him.

This is why I love that Charlotte encouraged us to “teach the child, not the curriculum”. It’s not about how many pages you completed at the end of the day. It’s about does my child love to learn? Did my child have good ideas to think about today? 

You might refer to the discussion about using timers or do a search for other threads regarding dawdling, the habit of attention, and timers for additional suggestions. 

Blessings,

Lindsey

Lol…I so identify with all this. I don’t think I have found solutions…maybe have then forget to continue implementing. I did try headphones & classical music. DD 8 liked it but the tablet thing it was on wouldn’t play continuously so she’d stop to put on songs. Perhaps using an actual mp3 player would solve that….I just got distracted from finding a solution & went back to nagging & yelling lol. A quite talkative & busy 5yo sister is her biggest focus enemy. She is quite fidgety too & haven’t found a good solution to that yet…maybe a stress ball?? I bet my daughter would roll out & play with playdough instead of working during independent time but maybe not family studies time. Anyway…I see what you’re saying about catching before attention is lost Lindsey but guess what I’m unsure of, & perhaps OP is as well, is if dd has done one or two (i.e. virtually no work) by the time the distraction & loss of focus starts, how do you ever get any math (or whatever) done if you move on at that point? Perhaps you’re saying come back to it later in lessons or maybe that we learn to accept those little amounts as enough while training attention?? I’m guessing the second now that I thought it through to ask lol. I think some of this leads back to the idea of how we view children & education…as much as I’m embarrassed by it, I do struggle with seeing dawdling as my child being bad in some way & almost that schooling (intentional use of that word bc I truly wouldn’t say I see “education” the same yet realizing I’ve been focused on schooling not educating) is about producing work that says, “I’ve learned xyz”.  Anyway…don’t want to get off track from OP’s question 🙂 

I should have also mentioned the idea of natural consequences. Children need to understand that if they do not apply themselves to the task set before them, they will lose time or privileges later in the day in order to complete the task. This is NOT punishment, but natural consequences. The natural consequence of not finishing the chapter of a book because the child was dawdling or looking out the window would be that they would have to finish it later when they might be playing or having some free time. If my child won’t give 15 minutes of her full attention on xyz now, then she will have to give up 15 minutes of her time later to put in the 15 minutes of work she should have given her full attention to earlier in the day. Does that make sense?

Sooner or later, the child sees that he should give his full attention the first time around or else he will lose his own time doing something fun later.

So that’s basically what cdm2kk described above, but I should have mentioned it in my first post. Hope that helps!

Sometimes we just jump up and play a quick game of simon says or do jumping jacks…gets us going and laughing!