If you work with children, you are familiar with the challenges of navigating their short attention spans. While it’s easy to merely label young children as “unfocused,” there are a variety of developmental challenges that interfere with a child’s ability to maximize their attention for a long period of time.

Luckily, there are some time-tested program strategies that can help to overcome these challenges and maximize children’s focus, attention, and engagement with a physical activity program.

Consider 5 of these “programming secrets to success” below.

1. Provide “just enough” guidance

When introducing physical skills and activities to children, we as fitness educators are inclined to hit them with a barrage of directions and cues. After all, we want to educate them so they can perform the skill successfully.

The problem is that young children become overwhelmed fairly quickly. A new, novel task requires “all hands on deck” from a neuromuscular standpoint. This is not to mention that children’s brains are not wired to “filter” environmental stimuli like adults’ brains are. Other kids, cars driving by, even an errant flying bug commands their immediate attention. Add the constant chatter of a coach in combination with a new demand to the neuromuscular system and you have a formula for frustration. Focus and frustration can’t exist simultaneously in young children.

Consider providing the lowest effective dose of coaching and cueing when working with young children. This can be as little as one cue per week. Demonstrate the skill, provide the one thing they need to remember in performing the skill, have them repeat it all together, then let them “play” with the skill through activities and games. Guidance should always fall back to the single cue provided for that day or week.

This way kids avoid overwhelm and have a chance to develop a movement pattern naturally. While it’s important that children are introduced to a variety of skills at a young age, they can continue to develop them for life.

2. Keep it short!

As mentioned above, many environmental stimuli compete for a child’s attention. In their mind, a bird landing on the field deserves just as much attention as the activity or instruction they are supposed to be immersed in. To overcome this, keep activities brief and change basic criteria frequently.

Take a game of “tag” for example. The interactive nature of this activity immediately engages kids. However, after a while, the novelty wears off and their attention follows suit. To overcome this, consider maintaining the rules of the original game for 1-2 minutes, then change. Boys might be “it” for 30 seconds, then girls. After 2 rounds, the “it” criteria would change to people with red shirts, then people with white shirts, etc. Even the criteria by which to re-enter the game after being tagged can be changed frequently. Consider how this could be applied when teaching skills as well. Integrate minor changes to the original criteria every few minutes.

With this design, the basic constructs of a game or activity remain intact. Small and relatively inert criteria change often enough to make the activity “new” and worthy of a child’s attention.

3. Have an “attention anchor”

Even the most experienced instructors with the most tried and true program design can lose kids’ focus and attention quite easily. While this could be an indicator that instruction or a game/activity has been going on too long, sometimes it’s important to get the kids to mentally regroup.

An “attention anchor” is a recognized verbal or nonverbal cue initiated by the coach that prompts children to respond in some way. For example, “When you hear two claps, drop your hips low and put your hands on your knees”. Or “When I raise my left hand, jump up and down twice, then look at my nose”.

These anchors provide a “reset” for kids’ attention spans. While their focus was beginning to shift towards other things in their environment, this commands the focus back to the instructor and the task at hand. These are useful for providing new instructions or re-focusing on previous instructions. If a coach finds it necessary to continually use this strategy however, they may need to evaluate other factors that may be causing kids to drift off task.

4. Consider the environment!

With everything surrounding a child competing for their attention, a smart instructor knows how to design a physical activity environment that minimizes distraction.   When this happens, the activity is the most interesting thing going on!

• Use the tips below to decrease distractions and increase focus and attention!
• Never have children face the sun when instructing
• Have clear expectations and guidelines for parental involvement
• Bring kids into close proximity when instructing
• Attempt to create the flow of an activity with children facing away from other distracting environmental stimuli
• Eliminate music or other background noise when instructing
• Identify “attractive nuisances” in an environment and position the activities as far away as possible
• Avoid “problematic partners” through random partner selection for the appropriate activities

5. Guide their disengagement

Sometimes, managing kids’ attention spans involves some give and take. If kids are distracted during a physical activity session, what distracts them? Is it the play equipment that borders the field? Is it the dandelions they want to pick from the grass? Is it the sandcastle they want to make in the dirt? An instructor can waste precious energy constantly correcting and redirecting kids’ focus away from these things. The fact is, if kids show interest in something, their attention will continually go to it. Instead of fighting this natural inclination, use it!

Provide a short (30 seconds to 1 minute) period(s) throughout a session for kids to indulge in one of these distractions. Obviously, safety must be taken into account, but this directed disengagement creates a unique phenomenon. For one, kids are often drawn to distractions because they aren’t supposed to be. It’s human nature. Approval, albeit brief, from an instructor lessens the novelty.  Additionally, when kids are directed to do an activity they naturally want to do, they are more engaged with other instructions as well.

I discovered this when coaching 5-year-old children in soccer. I got tired of repeatedly stopping them from picking dandelions on the field while they were supposed to be participating. Finally, I challenged them to each pick 10 dandelions in 20 seconds. Not only did this get all of the kids running, but they were also eager to hear my next challenge (passing the ball 5 times).

Don’t let childrens’ short attention spans create frustration for everyone involved. Use the 5 secrets to programming success outlined above and engage kids to be active for life!

For breakfast, I had 3 eggs, salmon, and a piece of toast with spinach!

Author: @brettk