Attention
The importance of attention given to each child
Like one of our wonderful teachers at our Paris school said, attention can be measured with “the soggy fry theory”. This theory can help to shed light on how children function and help us answer their needs without draining our energy as parents or teachers.
The warm fry theory
According to the theory stated by the American psychologist Fitzhugh Dodson, children like fries. They can’t get enough of warm and crusty fries. But they love fries so much that even if you do not give them warm and crusty fries, they would rather have cold and soggy fries than not at all!
Fries are the attention we give to children :
Warm fries are positive attention: play with them, laugh with, compliment them, read them a story, present the material…
Cold fries are the negative attention: complain because they make mistake, reprimand them, get mad because of them, lose patience, raise your voice…
Attention is like fries. Children would rather have negative attention than not at all!
When they are irritating it is simple: they try to draw our attention. Because a child will always rather want to be reprimanded than ignored! If we do not give them positive attention, they prefer to “bother us”. At least, even if we reprimand them, they obtain some sort of attention from the adult.
In order to preserve the atmosphere at home, it is necessary to spend quality time with each one of our child, even though we do not want to or we do not have enough time!
In exchange here are 2 good news:
Just a little time every day is needed to answer children’s attention needs. Once they get their amount for the day something quite magical happens: they start playing by themselves and do not solicit us (at least for a little while).
Second good news: the more quality time we spend with our children, the more we will enjoy it! It is about finding (again) the pleasure of each moment with them.
At home positive attention is very much needed in order for a child to grow and be considered in his individuality. It is also why our international schools are the chance for your children to study in smaller classes where each benefits from the attention they need.
