100 Family Media Literacy Activities, Ages Pre-School through Teen Years

Are You a “High Hopes” Parent?

Attending to Our Children’s Attention Span

Building the Foundation for Resiliency Skills

Live and Play in Your World: Stimulus Addiction and the Growing Brain

Looking for Meaning in All the Right Places

Parenting Today: The World Has Changed, Have We?

Parenting as a Living System

Reading the Screen

Screen Time and Obesity

Screen Violence: Impact on Self as Relational Being

Teaching Children Gratefulness

 Attending to Our Children’s Attention Span (cont.)

4.         Choose screen content that has a slower pace.
Look for TV programs, movies, and video games that mimic real-world rhythms more closely. The late Mr. Rogers and even Barney were laughed at for being so slow. Yet, this pace requires that children use their attention span. What could make more sense?

Youngsters can develop the mature attention spans they need for effective thinking and problem-solving in today’s screen-machine world, given the time and space to do so. The normal course of human brain development naturally leads to a well-developed attention span—the fundamental human requirement for learning and creative achievement.

References

1.  Jane Healy, Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don’t Think and What to do About It, Simon and Schuster, 1991, p. 235. 2.  Dimitri Christakis, et. al., “Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children,” Pediatrics, vol. 113, n. 4, April 4, 2004. http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2004/ADHD-TV-Ped4apr04.htm3.  Sandra Blakeslee, “If Your Brain Has a ‘Buy Button,’ What Pushes It?” The New York Times, October 19, 2004.4.         Daniel Siegel, M.D., The Mindful Brain, W. W. Norton and Company, 2007, p. 114.5.         Ibid.6.         Ibid., p. 115.7.         Ibid., p. 73.Copyright © Gloria DeGaetano, 2009. All rights reserved. No reprinting rights granted without the author’s permission.

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