🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (8 tweets)
One of the few pieces of parenting advice that I’m highly confident in and think generalizes widely across personalities, family cultures, ages: If your child is concentrating on doing something, don’t interrupt. Don’t correct, don’t compliment, don’t join in. Leave them be.
don’t interrupt this sort of thing https://t.co/exOipPkoZM
or this https://t.co/7XP72GbVSc
6 week old baby concentrating purposefully for 35 minutes, at 20x. You don’t have to watch the whole thing to get the gist, including in full just as a possibility proof of the developmental capacity for deep focus starting incredibly young. https://t.co/MSVIO2wIbW
or this https://t.co/37iAKbgXqV
She’s obsessed with pouring without spilling. 20mo. “[T]he child will fix his attention upon an object, will use it for the purpose for which it was constructed, and will continue to repeat the same exercise indefinitely.” Montessori https://t.co/luwrdThM7X
Yes there are a million excepts to this; this isn’t a categorical imperative, it’s a strong heuristic flowing from the developmental principle that sustained, concentrated activity is where the magic happens in development
This is actually how I quick train babysitters me: So if children are happy and focused, what do you do? sitter: Play with them! Talk to them! Encourage them! me: No, you get out your phone and you fucking doomscroll your zoomer heart out https://t.co/B5Y28x8h1y