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SherryCurp
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Location: Poland
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| Posted: March 03 2005 at 8:57pm | IP Logged
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I've been reading in vol. 6 on the habit of attention, and wondering....
The picture of a 6- or 7-yo listening to something once, attentively, and then being able to narrate it back appeals to me.
But my oldest dd is 5 (the others are 2 and 6 mo.), and when they like something they want it read over and over and over.... 
Can someone who's been there describe what it is like to transition into the read-it-once-then-narrate mode, and at about what age this can happen? It seems like the sort of thing that would be dependent on developmental readiness, as well as the fostering of the habit. I don't want to jump the gun, or to just let lazy habits form by default. Hints, please!
I can't imagine trying to start that way with the littlest ones. Isn't the motto of a two- or three-year-old "do it again!"?
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Willa
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| Posted: March 04 2005 at 3:22pm | IP Logged
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Hi Sherry,
I'm not a CM expert. When she talked about the habit of attention, though, I don't think she meant that moms shouldn't read well loved stories to little ones over, and over, and over again! Little kids need that kind of consolidation and even older people come back to revisit the same books -- their understanding changes as they themselves change and grow.
I think Charlotte Mason was talking in the context of not using repetition as a crutch, or an excuse for half-attention, in matters of education. This isn't what you see in a preschooler, who loves and need the same things over and over and rightly so. This is what you see in a school-age child whose mind doesn't want to face a difficult task, so he daydreams and loses half of it and can only give a very vague narration "um, a guy was fighting with another guy..." or "how do you do that math problem again, mom?" The kid figures there will always be another chance, and this develops a habit of intellectual laziness and dependency.
In the early years, CM suggests using toys, playing and the outdoors to extend the habit of attention. She recommends not letting a child flit from one toy or activity to the next, but encouraging a finishing and putting away of one thing before going to another. Outside, she has several activities that are meant to increase the habit of attention -- like "go beyond that hill and come back and tell mother what you have seen".
In books, with my toddlers, in a similar vein, I've been trying to point out new things in the book upon the second or fifth or hundredth reading -- talking about the picture, or the words, the way Five in a Row does sort of, encouraging the child to dwell on the book longer than he might otherwise do.
That's the kind of thing that prepares for a "habit of attention" in the school years, I believe. Attention is very closely allied with a habit of observation and of communication, so anything you can do to encourage your child to ponder, and inspect, and converse about what he's discovered is helping develop his attention span. I wish I'd been more aware of that when my older kids were younger 
So it sounds to me that you are doing it right -- as to how to transition, Charlotte recommends starting with *brief* stories like Aesop's Fables and having the child narrate accurately after one reading (read aloud to the child). But this isn't expected until the child is six.
Hope this helps!
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Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Developing the habit of attention
