The end of the school year is a magical time.
Kids have made it through a grueling year of groggy early mornings, rigid class schedules, piles of homework, and endless extracurriculars.
Finally, they have two whole months of sunny freedom. It’s a well-deserved break.
But this gift of time can easily be squandered. No parent wants to return home from work to see their offspring on the couch, watching TV or playing video games, or scrolling on smartphones, and wonder, “Have they been doing this all day?”
Summer is an excellent opportunity to teach kids to control their time and attention: the precious skill of becoming indistractable that will transfer to the next school year (and the rest of their lives).
Summer Is Kids’ Time to Shine
It may seem counterintuitive, but kids have a much better shot at learning to control their time and attention during the summer break than during the school year. That’s because, during the school year, they’re not really given that option. What they do and when is decided chiefly for them.
But the summer break is their turn to decide.
It also offers kids a chance to soak up the three psychological nutrients they need to become indistractable, which they often lack in schools. These nutrients were identified by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci in their self-determination theory for psychological well-being:
Autonomy: volition and freedom of control over their choices
Competence: mastery, progression, achievement, and growth
Relatedness: feeling important to others and that others are important to them
Children need these nutrients to grow into capable individuals who can manage their attention and time. If they don’t get sufficient amounts of these nutrients, they seek them in distractions, overindulging in social media and video games.
1. Autonomy
Kids don’t have the autonomy to make their own choices at school.
“Teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons,” according to research from former Psychology Today editor in chief Robert Epstein, author of a 2007 article titled “The Myth of the Teen Brain.”
Barbara Rogoff, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, hypothesizes that “children give up control of their attention when it’s always managed by an adult.”
Kids can become conditioned to lose control of their attention. And since they don’t get autonomy from school, they turn to their devices to find it online, thus becoming highly distractible.
2. Competence
Few kids feel competent in classrooms today.
A primary culprit is the emphasis on standardized testing in many countries. Standardized testing is a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t account for differences in development, learning, and intelligence types.
A child who isn’t doing well in school and doesn’t get individualized support will start to believe that achieving competence is impossible, so they stop trying.
Then that child will turn to outlets that make them feel competent—like video games, apps, and other potential distractions.
3. Relatedness
Free play and spontaneous socializing with peers are formative parts of growing up.
However, kids spend so much of their time at school, doing homework, and participating in extracurriculars that they rarely have time for unstructured, unchaperoned socializing. That’s why they spend so much time on their devices seeking communities and interactions in online forums.
It’s not a given that the summer break will feed children these psychological nutrients.
Kids specifically need an indistractable summer. They need to be empowered to decide how to spend their time, do activities that make them feel competent, and build relationships with friends.
Step 1: Figure out how kids want to spend their time.
What qualities or attributes do you admire and want to embody yourself? What activities will help you fulfill those values?
What do you want to accomplish by the summer’s end, or in general?
What activities are you interested in doing?
The things your kids come up with might surprise you! They may want to establish a running routine to get in shape for soccer tryouts in the fall. They may want to learn a new skill, like playing an instrument. They may want to volunteer their time to those in need.
Other ideas they have, like playing video games, may come as no surprise at all.
Adults can help kids think about the full range of possible values by introducing them to the three life domains: themselves, work, and relationships.
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