I’ve often heard parents talking about how difficult it is to get their child(ren) to sit down for a project or to do homework. Back then, with just a toddler on my hands, and my only experience of homework being the one I did 25 years back, I simply couldn’t understand. Now, as my son juggles with “Integrated Primary Science” and “Communicative English” in school, I’m surprised at how much he learns everyday. One day, he came back from school saying he had to take 3 objects for demonstration on the concepts of “transparent, translucent and opaque”. Another day, he needed 5 fun facts on any planet ( he chose Saturn). While I truly enjoy doing these quick 5-minute projects with him, I wonder how he will react when these projects become bigger and take longer. You see – my son ( as most kids this age ) has severe problems sitting down to doing anything which needs him to think constantly on one topic for more than 300 seconds. We have spent endless days of school holidays – zipping from one game to another – Scrabble for 5 minutes, Monopoly for 10, book cricket for 3, UNO for 2, Colouring for 5 (you get the gist) – and still feeling bored  Then, finally, I decided to take matters into my hands and “prepare” him to learn to concentrate on any one topic for 15 minutes at a stretch. Our project was the “Atlas” ! We took a big world map which he has and I asked him to draw each continent, write down the names of the countries with their capitals along with places of interest. While I painstakingly drew each minute country in Africa, he took up “South America”. To his credit, he drew each country neatly, coloured them, labelled them and proudly added it to his “map” collection. But all this was done in exactly 7 minutes and he refused to sit down to another. There went my experiment down the drain. But, I’m a staunch follower of King Bruce and I plan to be at it till I succeed ! Do you think I will ?? Do you think my son will finally learn to sit in one place and work ?

Re-published with permission from the blog of ParentEdge, a bi-monthly parenting magazine that aims to expose parents to global trends in learning and partner with them in the intellectual enrichment of their children.