Occupied Times

One of the common needs for which parents visit me is to seek help to improve the attention of their children. I have a 20 point questionnaire for parents to fill in on such occasions, to find out how they are occupied at home, during travels, while waiting to catch a train or visit a doctor or when parents are shopping, etc.

The responses give me an indication that most parents do not plan well to occupy their children in meaningful ways, while they are alone or in the company of adults. So they end of watching TV, playing with cell phone or fidgeting, running around disrupting others and at risk for themselves, etc.Sometimes these times end up as quarreling times between parents and children.

Every child needs to have a bag or rug sack in which he or she can carry, toys, books, craft materials, color pencils and coloring books, binoculars, etc. while waiting or travelling. The contents will vary with the age of children and their interests. Ever since I have advocated this for parents, I have had impressive feed back about the way children occupy meaningfully on occasions when they have to wait. The spill over benefit is that their attention span has improved and are more organized to occupy themselves without having to be told to do so even at home.

Most children till about 8 years of age need such a supervised engagement plan to get into the habit of using time creatively. About 30 percent of time of pre-school children are spent waiting. Let us turn them to be ‘occupied times’.

M.C. Mathew (text and photo)