How To Win The Battle for Attention and Focus with your Students! 

We have a, no movies or tv shows past 2000 rule in our house. Why? new stuff shortens attention span. No tablets, but we have done like the first few seasons of Sesame Street on car rides when they were younger. Now they have mp3 players filled with audiobooks for the car.

Love your show and this topic. We homeschool with about 1/2 to 2/3 of our curriculum coming from Memoria Press. Love that you mentioned Andrew Pudewa - we use and so appreciate I.E.W. for writing. I have found that declaring an official “Reading Time” helps my kids focus for longer stints on their books. This helps the kids who have F.O.M.O. (the Fear of Missing Out) settle down and read their own book if they know the entire household is supposed to be quietly reading. For my little boys who are early readers, they have an assigned book or two (like Little Bear) and then they get library books that have an audio thingy attached (I think they are called Wonderbooks?) which reads the book aloud while they read along in the text of the book. This helps stretch out their reading time without overtaxing them. I dearly love reading aloud, and we do that as much as possible, but I also love audiobooks for family read-alouds (if the reader is skilled!). All that to say - I agree, one way to extend attention span in general is to gently work on increasing time spent on focused reading. Great topic, thank you!

Our family just got our daughter into a classical education based Christian private school and we are so blessed and over joyed to have this opportunity. We cannot wait to witness how this style of education will nurture her mind and her spirit. I’m just here looking for resources to grasp a full understanding of how to support her in this journey. ❤ thank you for your content and your efforts. ❤️

This is a fantastic topic! Thank you for sharing!

Great episode! I always need these reminders.

I thoroughly enjoy listening to all of your discussions! It really is a treat. I use what you're reading as my suggested reading list and am half way through "Life at the Bottom." It reminded me of "The Abolition of Man." Also, I've observed my own attention span getting shorter. As you mentioned, it is a problem not just for students. Even America's pastime of baseball is now set to a clock to shorten the game. I need to be intentional about going against this cultural trend. God bless you all. Thank you.

It was a joy listening to you all 😄.

Cold turkey is definitely best we have tried both versions and cold turkey is most effective also as you’re dealing with the aftermath be intentional about setting out toys not crazy just set up a few Dinosaurs or few stuffed animals with a tea set (don’t do all the work just set out an invitation to play)

Awesome shirt, Jessica!

Agree that it's not just books. I tried to show The Princess Bride to my 7th and 8th graders during the last week of school. They started complaining about 10 minutes in because it wasn't a cartoon!

I don’t know why but Hard Times is a favorite of mine.

I'm here to comment and support. Good video!

The constant ads make this otherwise interesting content nearly unwatchable.