Not wanting to study, spending hours on homework, failing to achieve the desired success in exams is a situation I often observe among students.
In such a case, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder may be the first thing that comes to mind. However, when I deal with this situation by including different perspectives, I see that some emotional processes are also involved. In order for us to focus on a given task, our capacity to delay gratification must be developed. To give an example, while reading a book, we may suddenly want to do something else, but we finish the page that attracts our attention and then think about dealing with something else. This shows that we humans have the capacity to procrastinate. We expect the same situation in students, instead of listening to the lesson during the lesson, they may want to be busy with more fun things, but a child can focus on the lesson if he manages to postpone the fun to recess. This skill of ours starts to develop at the age of 6 and beyond, so starting primary school at an early age may create a situation where children have focus and attention problems, but this may be related to age rather than attention. In this context, I would like to emphasize that it is very important to think from different perspectives of holistic assessment when making a comment about attention in children aged 6 years and younger. When evaluating focus and attention problems, it is necessary not to miss what happens in the inner world of children. Anger, anxiety, depression, family conflicts affect focus negatively because when we humans' brain structure is busy with an emotional/relational problem, our focus and attention span decreases. If our children's interest in the lessons has decreased, is there something that bothers them as a priority? How do you feel? Anxiety is one of our most basic emotions that hinders learning processes. When I observed anxious children, I had the opportunity to observe that their attention was distracted and their learning weakened. Psychiatrists diagnose attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. When making the diagnosis, it is necessary to evaluate more than one area, so the child's development history, whether there is a genetic transition, family environment, parents. attitudes, attitudes in the school environment, and relationships with friends should be taken into consideration. Along with all these, MOXO, WISC4, CAS, projective inner world assessment, which we call objective cognitive and attention assessments, and teacher opinions should be included in the work and a road map should be drawn and planning should be made. Considering these contexts, I suggest that the effect of emotional factors on attention and focus problems should not be ignored.
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