Simple activities to prepare your Brain to concentrate and increase your memory! Watch now!

Hi everybody, good morning. Today is an extremely important topic. Now that schools have started, we need to understand how we can make our children focus in school, how to make them concentrate, how to increase their memory. Because a lot of times children are just learning things and they're not remembering it, they're not registering it, right? So today we're going to be talking about how to help your child concentrate more, focus more, and also increase their memory power. So welcome, please join me, come quickly, call your friends, tell them today is extremely important, it will help your child concentrate more, you as a parent can help them really learn more, learn better, and remember more. A lot of you had this question. I've got so many DMs and so many messages where parents are asking me, ma'am, how do we help our child concentrate? My child is not paying attention, especially because of the 2-year gap. Understand, when you have a gap of learning, when you have a gap of routine. For example, you are exercising every day and then you go on a holiday for a week. As soon as you're back, it takes you a while, right, to get back to routine. That's the same thing that's happening to our children. After a long gap of being at home, children are finding it difficult to get back on routine, to get back on track. And we as parents can actually help them get back on track. We can help them make a consistent routine, make a consistent structure, and help them really concentrate more in their school and class. So are you ready? Are you all with me? I want to see some yeses in the chat box. Are you all with me? Are you ready to understand How you can help your child concentrate more, how you can help your child also remember more. So concentration and memory are two completely different parts of a coin, right? Concentration is the moment, the present moment, right now. So right now when you're listening to me, how many of you are actually concentrating? How many of you are really listening to me? That is concentration. Memory is a byproduct of concentration. Memory is a result of concentration. Only when you concentrate can you actually remember what you learnt. So for example, in my life, what are some ways, what are some methods that will enhance concentration? How can you enhance your concentration? A lot of parents come to me and they say, you know, ma'am, we can't focus, our concentration is not there, we can't— we're not in the present moment. Concentration is very similar to mindfulness. Concentration is very similar to being present in the moment, right now with me. When you are listening to my live, how many of you are already messaging on your phone or on the phone or doing something else? Multitasking is great, but for children, multitasking reduces concentration. And tell me something, if your child sees you multitask, which means sees you on the phone while teaching them, will your child be able to pay attention? More often than not, no, because they are watching you. So the first rule, the first rule of concentration is when you are with your child, especially when you are making them study or making them do something important, please leave your gadget in the other room. How many of you are ready to do that? Are you ready to do that? Are you ready to leave your gadget in the other room when you are making your child do something important like studying? You need to first remove all the physical distractions around you to concentrate. So first, the environment needs to be conducive for concentration. So I see a lot of yeses. Manasi, yes. Jaswinder, yes. Jocelyn, yes. Absolutely. So first rule of concentration is the environment has to be conducive so that you and your child can both concentrate. How can you do that? How can you make your environment more conducive? You can put your phone aside, you can make sure there are no other distractions, no toys, no books. That's why I always recommend a small study corner or a study space space where there's nothing else, where there is just the table and the book that they need to study. You need— see, we as adults get distracted, right? Now, for example, if a notification comes on your phone, so-and-so messaged you, what will happen? Where will your attention go? It will go on that message. So as 40-year-olds, we are getting distracted. So won't your 8-year-old get distracted? Of course they will. If we are getting distracted at our age and our level of education, then our children are very likely to get distracted, right? It's extremely normal for them to get distracted. It's nothing abnormal. So first thing, environment has to be clutter-free. No books, no toys, no nannies around, no other people around, just you your child a well-lit room, a desk, pens, pencils, and the book that they need to study from. Yes, can you all do that? No phones, no iPads, no laptops, nothing. First thing is in the environment. Second is you need to have a fixed time where your child is studying with you. So every day, even if the child, whether they have homework or they don't have homework, whether they have anything to do or not. Make it a time. Start— so children under 5, start with only 15 minutes. Children between 6 to 9, start with 25 minutes. Children from 9 to 12, make it 45 minutes, right? So just have that fixed amount of time— 45 minutes, 25 minutes, or 15 minutes. And in this fixed period of time, make it really fixed. 5 to 5:30 is study time with Mama. What you can do is to enforce that, write it down, have a little poster where you write it down. 5 to 5:30 study time with Mama. Stick it there. You can also put a Do Not Disturb sign so that no staff comes to disturb you, nobody comes to disturb Disturb you. you. Have a fixed time, a fixed place, and a fixed routine. Firstly, now that you have a fixed time, place, and routine, start— first 5 minutes of your hour, of your duration, should be asking your child, making them prioritize what all is important to do. What subject do they need to do first? What are the deadlines, what is due tomorrow. First, making them— so always from a very early age, help children make a target list, make a priority list so they know, okay, Mama, tomorrow English is due, day after maths is due, after 5 days I have a competition on speech. Have it written. That is a very important tool as an adult. You know, people ask me in terms of time management, how do you balance your time? I always have a to-do list, and now my children have a to-do list. My 9-and-a-half-year-old writes down her tasks for the day, and she keeps ticking them when she does it. You can do the same with even a 6-year-old. They can write or they can draw. Make them write down what all they need to finish in their 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 1 hour, whatever time it is. This will prepare them. So the first step The first step for concentration is preparation. Environment preparation, physical preparation, and mental preparation. So environmental preparation you have already done. Mental preparation you are doing by telling your mind, these are the important things I need to do in the next half an hour. Second part of mental preparation is tell your mind. I use this all the time. Self-talk is the most, most powerful way of doing things. So I tell myself, Sidhika, next 20 minutes you are not going to get disturbed, you are not going to get distracted, and you are going to finish this PowerPoint that you need to make and give your best. So do this with your children. Sit with your child, even a 3-year-old, and tell him, so Avyaan, next 15 minutes you are going to just give 100% to the counting that you are doing. Make them talk to themselves. So now physical preparation and mental preparation are both done. So that is out of the way. The brain is ready to concentrate. One more thing you need to prepare for is make sure they have ate, they've eaten well, they have slept well, they are ready to concentrate. Now while, when they are ready to concentrate, make them read the chapter. Make them read or do the homework of whatever needs to be done, and then ask them again. So every time they read a paragraph or they do the studies, have 2 questions ready for them. Am I clear with concentration? When you prepare your child to concentrate, they will 100% concentrate. It will take time because it is a habit that needs to be formed. So the habit that you are forming is Every day, fixed time, fixed place, fixed way of telling the brain that you are ready to concentrate. Okay, any questions on concentration? So I have two questions here, let me answer that. The first question that Jaswinder has on concentration is, how do you manage to do that with elder kids? I mean little ones around. Now here, Jaswinder, you have to set your boundary. If you have help at home, you have to make sure that that 20 minutes that you are spending with your elder one, your little one is either sleeping or she is with somebody else. So when you have 2 or 3 children, you have to balance that and do it when the little one is engaged somewhere else. Either she's sleeping or she's with your, um, help or grandparent, whatever it is. Make sure you have a fixed time when the other child is not around. Also remember, parents, this is a great one-on-one time with your child. So when I make my 3 children study, what I do is I spend first 10 minutes with each child alone where the other 2 are not in the room, and after that I put all 3 of them together and then they finish their independent study work, whatever they have to do. I hope that's clear. Smriti has a question: How to make children independent to to study on their own? Smriti, great question, and let me tell you, my children study independently. How I have done that is I break it up. I give them 10 minutes. 10 minutes is question-answer time with Mama. 10 minutes is clearing their doubts. Then 20 minutes they are doing self-study. So I am in the room, but mind you, I am not on my gadget. I am sitting there, but they are doing their After 20 minutes, next 5 minutes is where they share what they have done with me. So that is how I break it up: 10, 25, 5. 10 minutes I discuss with them on what all they need to do. We do the priority list, we do the task list, we do the to-do list. 20 minutes they are doing independent work on their own, whether it's craft work, whether it's writing work, whether it's reading work. They are trying to do it on their own. And the next last 5 minutes they are discussing what they have done with me. They are asking their doubts, they are asking their queries. And I do this every day, every day. When you do this, you will realize that slowly they are becoming independent. One thing that I want you to remember is to make your child independent, never tell them, oh, tum toh kabhi akele par teena hai, oh, teko toh parayaati nahi hai, you are not sitting alone and studying. 'You never study.' Don't start a productive, engaging, healthy time with a negative, rude, unproductive comment. Am I clear with that? Make sure your comments are very, very clear. Never start something good with something bad. You know what, a lot of times we say that to our child. We end up telling our child, "You never study. You haven't studied in the last 5 days. Come now and study right now." Will that help? Will that help? When we want something positive, why do we start with a negative statement? I am telling your brain, I am telling you to prepare your brain for something positive. And what are you doing here? Tell me. By telling your child, "You never study," you are actually preparing the brain to do something negative. The brain is not prepared for the positiveness. Yes, wow, that made so much sense. We become their inner voice. Yes, lovely, exactly. Write like in my book. If you don't have my book, Supercharge Your Parenting, Please buy it right now. It's so important to understand. The link is on my page. Please buy it. I talk a lot about the inner voice in my book, how whatever we say becomes your child's inner voice. Same inner voice is important in concentration also. Okay, the next question that Jocelyn has is, do you remember any concentration activities? Of course, of course we have a lot of concentration activities. The simple concentration activities is this one: tap your head and pat your belly. So tap and pat, tap and pat. This is a great concentration activity. Another one is, yaase, you do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and yaase, you do 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Another great one is this: and this, this, and this, this. So all of these activities are helping with concentration. We have— you can make a number of activities. The other one is you take a finger and you point it here. One thing that I also do is I, every time we start studying, I tell my children to switch on their brain. So they take a finger and they say, "Switch on," and their brain is functioning. Their brain is on. On. So these little, little things to prepare their brain, to prepare their mind, to prepare themselves for concentration is very, very important and very, very useful. So you can do a lot of concentration activities. Now coming to memory, my biggest tool for memory is— do you all remember? My very eager mother just showed me 9 planets. Do we all remember that mnemonics? Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Pluto is not a planet anymore, so I just stop at 9. Or vibgyor. You can make little nursery rhymes, little songs, little mnemonics of whatever they need to learn. Yes, planets. So anything that they need to learn. I remember even in school in school for maths, we had done the whole delta, cos, sine, theta. You know, there are mnemonics for all of this. So you can do some research and find out short forms, how children can memorize these things faster. The idea of this whole thing is prepare your child for concentration. Don't start for something positive with something negative. Have a fixed time and don't ever label your children as, "Arre, he never pays concentration." Remember, what you are saying is coming true. We all know that, right? Has anybody experienced that? Actually, would anybody like to come in my video and share this whole idea of what I am saying? Whatever we say, it comes true. I think this is very important as parents, extremely important. I have seen this in my life all the time. Today if I say, "Oh, my daughter is very irritable, she's always crying, she just doesn't listen to me," I am first putting it in the universe, I'm putting it in my consciousness, and I'm also putting it in my child's consciousness. Am I not doing that? She will say, she will say the same thing to herself. 'Oh, I don't concentrate. Mama thinks I never listen to her.' Forget it. Never. I mean, make it a daily practice. Ki, I will never say anything negative. I will never say anything negative. I will only say what I want in my life. Can we all do that? If you can, type yes in the chat box. I want all my 14 viewers to say yes in the chat box. Can we today promise ourselves that we will only say, we will only think what we want in our life? Quickly, quickly, I want lots of yeses. We will only say, we will only think what we want. If I want my child to listen to me, I will say my child listens to me. Thank you. Yes, lots of yeses coming in. If I want my child to concentrate, I will say my child concentrates. Say yes, yes, yes now. A lot of times we spend our energy on what we don't want, right? Oh, I don't want this. Oh, I don't want my mother-in-law to get angry. I don't want this. We keep doing that. No, that is not the way of living. That is not normal. Never think about what you don't want in life. Forget about it. Only think about what you want in life. What do you want in life right now? Say it with me. What do you want? What do you want from yourself? What do you want from your child? What do you want from your spouse? Say that with me. Write it down. I want to feel I want to finish 5 phone calls today. I want to finish my pending work today. What do you want to do today? Write it down. Focus on the want, focus on your to-do. The more you do that, better your concentration, right? Better your focus, better your energy, and best results will come. Best results will come if you say what you want right now. Never say don't, right? Am I clear with that? I had a question in the middle. Let me answer that. Smriti says, my child is saying, auntie, how can I make study— how I can make study interesting so that I can learn fast? Great question. There are lots of ways to make your study interesting. I use simple ways. One is drawing. So I draw a story out, I draw a subject, whatever it is, I use drawing. Second is mind maps. Have you heard of mind maps? So I put a word, for example, electricity. Then I put another circle, another word. Where does electricity come from? What do I use electricity for? How will that help me? So I use a lot of these things, these are called webs, word webs, where you put a circle, you write down a word, you connect it to another word that connects to another word that connects to another. So a lot of connections. A lot of children work very well with connections. So you can use mind maps, you can use illustrations, drawings, you can also use a story. Now I remember my children, they have learned the table of 7, the table of 9. Through stories. So you can also use stories. You have to be creative. Stories, mind maps, illustrations. What else can you do? You tell me. You have to think of ways to make your studies interesting. Color coding, using different sketch pens for different words, and then writing down the keywords. Writing down the keywords. For example, if you are doing history or if you are doing biology, write down the keywords. And write down one word that reminds you of that word. Just one word. Now that one word will act as an activator. It will be a trigger to help you remember other things. Let me do a brief thing. Now, for example, if you think of Sidhika Goenka, what is one word that you think of? Just one word. That one word reminds you of me. Exactly. Stories make things magical. But think of one word. So when you want to study any subject, what is one word that reminds you of that keyword? If you are studying Sarojini Naidu, what is one word? Narendra Modi, what is one word? Do one word study. One word will instigate many different words and different stories. Am I clear? So I have told you 5 techniques of increasing your memory One is using finger movements, using different concentration games. Second is drawing. Third is mind maps, word webs. Fourth is remembering keywords and remembering one word to associate with that keyword. And the fifth is making a story around what you are studying. You can make stories in maths, science, social studies, Hindi, Hindi, English, everything. But the key to everything is preparation. Please remember, parents, memory will come only if your brain is prepared. So preparation is fundamental, right? Preparing the environment— no gadgets, no distraction. Preparing the mind, preparing the body— the body should be well fed. The body should be feeling adequate, not very hot, not very cold. So preparation of the body, preparation of the mind, and preparation of the space are three fundamental things to make sure that your child is concentrating. Are you all with me? Do you agree? Even when you need to concentrate, you need to be well fed, right? If you are on a diet, if you are fasting, can Can you concentrate? Tell me, mothers, if you are on a diet, aapko baad zorse bhukh lag rahi hai, aap tab concentrate kar sakte ho? If you know ki sham ko ek party mein jaana hai, sham ko you have to go on a dinner party, can you concentrate? Nahi na, your mind is, kya pehnu dinner party mein, khan khan aayega, kya hovega. So another trick, let me tell you one other trick. Are you all ready? When you want your child to study or concentrate, do not tell them about the party that they have to go to in the evening. Bhaat baar apne bachcho ko bolte hai, aye Sunday ko apne picnic jainge, Saturday ko apne movie jainge, Friday ko birthday party hai. When we tell our child that before it has happened, the child is so excited that they are only asking those questions. Mama, kap jainge? Mama mein kya pahenge? Right? So tame their mind before something exciting happens. When they are studying, do not talk about other things that will distract your child's mind. Am I clear with that? Yes, they are mind wanderers completely, so we want their mind to be in one place. So physical preparation, mental preparation, emotional preparation, Emotional preparation, one more important thing. Maine aapko kya bata ya tha, if you tell your child, padhai ke pehle agar apne honko dat diya, kiya vo padenge? Will they study if you have scrimped at your child before studying? Apne bola ki, are tum kabhi homework ni karteo, itna sara homework padhai, abhi todan tao, better hoar homework karo. Are their emotional needs met? Will they study? Paach minute padenge apke dar se, phir chale jaenge. Haiya na? Yes or no? Yes or no? Quickly! So do not emotionally bombard them before their concentration time. When they have to do their homework, when they have to concentrate, emotionally they should feel happy. Mentally they should feel happy, physically they should feel well-fed, and environmentally no distractions. Fixed time, fixed place. Am I clear, Mamas? I hope I helped you. Today I want you to practice this. Decide a time, decide a venue, decide a place, and decide what all you have to do in that time. Break it up 5 25-10 or 5-20-10, whatever you want, or 10-20-10. You decide that time. 10 minutes of interaction, 20 minutes of independent work, and 5 minutes of discussion and reevaluation. Yes, a lot of children are at home, summer holidays have started, so you can try it right now. Take a subject, decide, you know, it's easiest to start with English. Because in English it's very easy to divide the time. English, it's easy to make a story, it's easy to use a drawing, it's easy to use a rhyme and a mnemonic. So try this with English, try this with science. Take 10 minutes to discuss the topic, 20 minutes to do individual work with the child, and 5 minutes of reevaluation at the end. Thank you so much for your feedback, Jaswinder. I am going to write this down after my live. I'm going to be posting it up in my stories. Thank you so much for your feedback. I really hope this helped you. I try my best to give you real life tips because I am a mother as well, and a mother of 3, and all my 3 kids are 3 different ages— 4 years, 7 years, and 10 years. So I have to constantly keep evolving with them before a parenting coach, before a psychologist, Before a mind transformation coach, I'm actually a mother. And as a mother, let me tell you, I have tried these techniques. I make sure that physically, mentally, emotionally, my child is prepared. So do that. And any other questions you have, please feel free to ask me. Please message me. You can DM me anytime. And I hope you benefited today. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to me. Thank you so much. I'll see you next Wednesday, same day, same time. If you have any topics that you want to talk about, any topics that you want to talk about, please ask, please message me, and I will make sure I do that with the live. Thank you, Dipti. Thank you, Urvashi. Thank you, Jocelyn. Appreciation. And let me— before I end, let me tell you one more thing. The way you appreciated me It brought a smile in my face. Can you all see that? Can you see the glow that I have because you appreciated my time and effort? Do the same with your child. And don't just say well done, good job. No, you know, like, let me— I'll give you an example, okay? Now somebody says thank you, you are amazing. Thank you, it was really helpful. And somebody says thank you, that particular tip that you gave That particular game that you taught me was very practical, very helpful. I am going to try it right away. Out of these 3 compliments, which one was the best according to you? Which one will best matlab kya? Which one will motivate me to do better? If you are with me, sorry, don't leave, don't leave. If you are with me, tell me. Out of these 3 compliments, Which is the compliment that will actually push me and make me understand ki Sidhika, ye jo apne kiya tha, ye right tha. Wo ap vapas karo. Yes, last one. When I was specific and when I told you ki ye vapas, ye vapas essay hi behavior karna hai. Agar aap mujhe bolenge ki Sidhika, ye jo game apne mujhe bataya, was very helpful. What will I do? I will tell you more games. I will tell you more activities, right? So when you are appreciating somebody, especially your children, be very specific. Say it specifically. Aaj aapne jo 10 ka table yaad kya na, ya 10 minute 7 ka table jo aapne yaad kya or aapne likha, that was very good, Shivay. That was really useful. Be specific because you want that same behavior to come back. Ye aap apne selfish reason ke liye kar rahe ho. Ap samajh rahe hain. You are doing this so that the same behavior comes back. So today when you are complimenting your child, be specific, elaborate, and do it more. Okay, yes. So please use the concentration activities and prepare your child. Thank you so much for listening to me. Bye, I'll see you next Wednesday. Have a super day.