H's teacher has mentioned to me that she has a hard time focusing. She will look off into space or get talking about something, like if she is writing about animals she will go off on her fav animal and talk. Shes not hard to redirect, you just have to stay on her.

I don't want to jump to meds, are there and natural things she can take or exercises we can do with her?

TIA!! 

How old is she? My son is 6 and for a while I was getting notes from his teacher saying things like he needs to stay on task, he needs to focus, talks during lessons or school work.

I figured he was just bored learning about things that he already knows. Some weeks are good weeks and some weeks I get notes home saying the same things again

I won't jump to meds either. Not while he is young and nothing might not even be wrong with him. 

Hi Tia,
My school teachers said the same thing about me when I was younger. First they switched me teachers, then we would do "focus" work at home, like a puzzle, or a game, something that kept my interest, but was also challenging. Just an idea. Best of luck to you! Parenting is no easy task!

Katie 

lol TIA means Thanks in Advance 

Shes 7, I know a lot has to do with the age right? their brains are gorwing at such a rapid rate and such.

Hi Tia
giggle 

I think it has to do with their age. They're still young so of course they are gonna be distracted a little bit. 

Have you ever taught her to pay attention or explained why it's important?


yes 

A good amount of exercise every day should do the trick! 

Are you having issues with her focusing at home?

If not, then the teacher needs to learn how to re-focus her attention.

Have a conference with the teacher and get a read on what is going on.

If you know of ways to re-direct your daughter's attention, then share the methods with the teacher. 

Her teacher does a great job focusing her at school. She just had commented that she does it quite often since coming back from winter break. But nothing has changed here, its weird. They have been playing outside each day after school, I cannot pin point anything that might be causing it. 

She's probably just bored.

They are probably doing a lot of review -

First, to get them back up to speed from the Christmas break and now because end of year testing is coming up soon. 

yeh i didn't think that she might just be bored, i bet she is. 

Just explain to her how important it is to stay on task. I'm sure you've talked to her though. That age group is quite chatty and I'm going to guess that she's not the only Chatty Cathy in the class. As for being bored, I believe in challenging a child, but school isn't always to going to be bells and whistles. 8th graders can be the same way. Everything is boring, everything takes effort, everything takes forever, books are too long, books are boring, blah blah blah. I'm afraid for this group of kids that I have. Some of them have great dreams of becoming famous, but don't want to work at it. They have this idea that it will fall in their laps. Can you tell I'm frustrated? LOL 

There's a difference between being bored and disinterested. 

It's so weird that you say this, because within the last few weeks or so, I've been getting notes home too. I went to lunch with my daughter today, and her teacher also said it's only been since after winter break.

Her thoughts were MAYBE that some of the other kids have kind of calmed down since the beginning of the year, and so while my daughter may have been doing it before hand it's just more noticeable now?

My thoughts are that maybe my daughter is just bored? I don't think it's a valid excuse, but it makes sense. My daughter is very bright, and at the end of the first grading period when I had a conference with her teacher - her teacher commented that my daughter is advanced, so that's not just me being biased!

She turned 6 in November, and is in Kindergarten. But she can read on a mid-first grade level. Her teacher just started her on Accelerated Reader books to engage and test her more and my daughter seems to be really enjoying that, but she still seems distracted.

The only thing that is different and has changed within the last few weeks, would be my daughter fractured her elbow and has been in a cast. That may have some bearing on the situation, but I don't think that's the root of the cause. 

Is she getting enough sleep? How difficult is she to get up in the morning? Games like memory and checkers are good for improving focus. 

shes usually pretty good, we just backed her bedtime from 8pm to 730. 

When attention goes awry, do something else, then go back and work, gradually ramp up the number of minutes working. 

Joey doesn't like to pay attention in class either. He tends to daydream. I did too at that age. Teacher says though, that he's a very out of the box thinker, so I guess it's a trade off.