Dreamy children under pressure

The most important information

• Can's mum describes the homework situation with her boy like this: If she leaves the table, Can stops working and prefers to daydream. He can't keep up with the homework from school and can't work reliably without help. Do children like Can just need to pull themselves together a little more?
• Find out in the dossier which complex processes in the brain are responsible for the fact that some children find it harder to concentrate and when it is advisable to have investigations carried out.
• Dreamy children can relax best during free play and when they don't have to follow a programme. They need to be able to withdraw so that they are not overwhelmed by external stimuli.
• Parents need to be sensitive but also clear so that they can closely accompany and support their child. Teachers should also take this to heart.
• The experience reports in the dossier show that this is unfortunately often not the case.

Sara and Patrick are at their daughter Noelia's school assessment meeting. «Your daughter needs to learn to concentrate and hand her things in on time! By the end of second grade, a child must be able to keep an agenda, full stop.» The teacher also demands that the parents hold back on help at home so that Noelia can become more independent.
Like many other parents who experience similar things, Sara, 43, and Patrick, 43, leave the conversation with a lump in their throats. Suddenly there is pressure to do something, but at the same time a feeling of helplessness, because all the school says is: «The child has to learn this, be able to do that, we expect this.» When children tend to daydream, work at a slow pace, are easily distracted and forgetful, they hear from adults again and again:

• «Stop dawdling around and get into gear.»
• «Think about your stuff just once, please.»
• «Don't always get distracted.»

These admonitions are often rooted in the fear that the child will be late, miss out on school, never become independent and not fulfil the requirements. In short: that the child's future is at risk if they don't «wake up» now, if the «knot doesn't slowly burst». There is talk of «stepping on the gas», trains leaving the station, points being set at the crossing and railway sidings.

But how do children experience the demands placed on them? How can parents and teachers support children who tend to daydream? How can they be given more space and time to better fulfil their needs? We would like to address these and other questions in the following dossier.

When the pressure rises

It is difficult for teachers to bear watching a dreamy child constantly looking out of the window in class, only starting their worksheets when the others are almost finished, not having their homework with them and spoiling their marks in tests by making «unnecessary» careless mistakes and working too slowly. They quickly fear that they will not be able to stick to the curriculum and that the child will not fulfil their potential.

Some parents feel that their child's future is at risk if they «mess around» and «don't get going».

Parents, on the other hand, feel obliged to ensure that their child does not fall behind - after all, they see how their classmates seem to master the demands of school effortlessly.

The child could actually ...

Raffaela, 38, from Lucerne, mother of seven-year-old Can, talks about a stressful situation: «When I talk to other mums, I feel even more depressed. Their children finish their homework in no time and do it on their own. We can't do that at all! I have to sit next to Can, otherwise he won't make a line. And if I get up for five minutes with the instruction «Finish that», I come back and again nothing has been done! He prefers to play with the eraser, stare at the wall or finger something. Since first grade, he's always brought home a mountain of homework on Friday that he didn't manage to do at school during the week.»

«The dreamy child just has to pull himself together for 20 minutes.» But it's not that simple.

Time and again, parents and teachers say in connection with dreamy children: «We know that he/she could «actually» do it, but ...»
This «but» often seems to be a small thing and something that has to come from the child: a bit of good will, personal responsibility, motivation and concentration. Everything would be easier if the child «pulled themselves together for 20 minutes» or «had their head in the game a bit». Is that too much to ask?

To answer this question, we can take a look inside our brains. We would like to anticipate one thing in the words of the writer Albert Camus: «Nobody realises that some people expend an incredible amount of energy in order to be normal.»

How concentration works

Not only technical devices have a default setting, our brain also has a default mode. This network in our brain was first discovered in 2001 by radiologist Marcus Raichle in the USA. He compared the brain activity of test subjects while they were solving a task with moments in which they lay still in a tube and fixed their gaze on a point. Contrary to previous ideas, the brain was not simply inactive in the resting situation.

Instead, certain areas of the brain were significantly more activated than when the test subjects were concentrating on a task. In further studies, it was found that this resting network is also activated when we daydream, make plans for the future, think about ourselves and our lives or look at art - in other words, whenever we let our thoughts wander instead of focussing our mind on a specific activity.

In some children, the brain matures more slowly; the ability to concentrate develops later or less well.

If we want to concentrate on a task, the brain has to suppress activity in the resting network. At the same time, the activity of another network, which is summarised under the term «executive control», increases. This helps us to consciously control our attention, switch back and forth between tasks, organise and plan, adapt flexibly to unforeseen events and monitor our own working behaviour.

The more we have to focus our attention and concentrate on a specific task, the more our brain has to inhibit the resting network and ramp up executive control.

This ability of the brain develops over the course of childhood and into adulthood. In some children, however, the brain matures more slowly and the fine-tuning between executive control and the resting network develops later and sometimes less well. According to current research, this depends on a complex interplay between genes, influences during pregnancy and birth as well as environmental factors.

As a result, these children find it more difficult to suppress daydreams voluntarily, to register when they drift off and to consciously refocus, as many findings from the neurosciences now show. From the outside, it can be observed in these moments how the boys and girls seem absent-minded, do not start the worksheet, can barely listen to the teacher and - once they are focussed - quickly become tired, whereupon their resting network takes over again.

All of this makes the demands of school much more stressful for dreamy children. Fabienne, the mum of a nine-year-old, explains: «Julin was increasingly exhausted by the end of the week - and sometimes even on Tuesdays - from the school and after-school activities. He regularly complained of tummy ache and no longer wanted to go to school or came home early from school.» Sara and Patrick from the canton of Bern, the parents of Noelia mentioned at the beginning, are also familiar with this exhaustion: «The pressure and the pace pushed Noelia to the limit. At the end of second grade, she no longer wanted to go to school and seemed almost depressed.»

When do we speak of attention deficit disorder?

We can imagine the ability to consciously direct our attention to an object and maintain concentration over a longer period of time as a continuum.

Some children succeed very early on in focussing on externally set tasks for a longer period of time and blocking out distractions, others a little later and some people show abnormalities in this area throughout their lives.

Attention deficit disorder is diagnosed when these abnormalities exceed a certain threshold on the continuum. This threshold is determined on the basis of diagnostic criteria. Whether a child fulfils these criteria is determined in an assessment.

If the child suffers from dreaminess or if their forgetfulness, slowness and lack of concentration impair their development, an assessment can be useful and facilitate access to therapy and support from the school.

Where dreamy children refuel

In order for dreamy children to be healthy, happy and productive in the long term, they themselves and their environment need to find out where their limits lie, which situations and activities are particularly demanding for the child and where they can recharge their batteries.

Anything that places a heavy demand on executive control is particularly tiring for dreamy children.

Dreamy children find it particularly stressful when they are exposed to a lot of new things, when things are loud and hectic.

Do you know this? You're watching a mobile phone video and think: Why is there suddenly so much background noise? Wasn't it quiet? Our brain has an amazing filtering capacity. It has neuronal structures that emphasise important stimuli and muffle unimportant ones, so that you can hear your conversation partner very well and no longer notice the background noise after a while. This performance strains and fatigues executive control.

When a lot of new things come at them, when things are confusing, loud and hectic, this costs dreamy children a lot of energy.
Noelia says: «When there are lots of people around me, I often just think about something else and would like lots of people to go home.»

Her parents, Sara and Patrick, make sure that their daughter is not exposed to too many stimuli that overwhelm her. After the large, confusing school environment had become increasingly stressful for her, they took the opportunity to transfer her to the other public school in the neighbourhood: the rural school on the Belpberg with 35 children and small, mixed-age classes. The nine-year-old feels more at home here: «You know,» she says, «when I look out of the window, I can just see green.»

Always nice according to the programme

The family of five constantly asks themselves what each individual needs and where they need to take each other into consideration: «Even if it requires more organisation for us parents, we would never send Noelia to lunch and then to afternoon lessons, for example. We just know that would ruin her. She needs her peace and space.»
Letting their minds wander, following their own rhythm, getting creative and realising their own ideas, playing freely - children today have much less time for all of this than they used to. More and more, these moments are being replaced by structured activities in clubs, extracurricular courses and daily structures.

It is precisely in unplanned moments that dreamy children can recharge their batteries and relax. Following a programme set by adults is exhausting for them - even if it is a hobby.

Dreamy children are dependent on periods of time in which they can withdraw and indulge in their daydreams.

Fabienne, a middle school teacher from Uster and mother of a nine-year-old, says of her son: «I often watched the aikido training that Julin has been attending for two years. You could observe his daydreaming really well there. The trainer was explaining something, all the children were concentrating - only Julin was looking in a completely different direction somewhere and wasn't taking any notice of the explanations.»

Dreamy children are dependent on periods of time in which they can withdraw and indulge in their daydreams. For seven-year-old Can, it's playing, where he can spend hours alone with his cars, action figures or Lego. Then he is in his own dream world. Fast-paced games frustrate him. He would rather tinker with something he has seen on YouTube. He also loves dressing up and putting on make-up, so he can look at himself in the mirror forever.

Noelia also has a strong ability to occupy herself with herself. After school, she often comes home and goes to her room. She says: «I don't care if I can still go out then. I need to relax first.» Her parents have also realised how important it is to consciously declutter everyday life: «We had to learn to look after ourselves and understand, for example: When we go to a big shopping centre or a party, it costs us something as a family. Even the nice things. Afterwards, we have to switch on a day off where we can relax, have no appointments and don't meet anyone.»

Forwards, forwards, tempo, tempo

When dreamy children are rushed or overwhelmed, you can almost watch them slow down. Under pressure, they often withdraw into their inner world and block out the hectic and demanding environment - or they explode, as the following example of Noelia shows. Her father says: «The teacher called us and said that Noelia had been cheeky at school and had snapped when she had forgotten to do her homework again. I replied: "Noelia freaks out when she is under immense pressure, feels unfairly treated and no longer knows what her task is. Could you help Noelia to remember to do her homework?» But the teacher stuck to her guns: she simply had to be able to do it, as a teacher she had to stick to the prescribed curriculum and the targets had to be met. We parents thought: What is this about now? Is it about the teachers ploughing through their programme, or is it also about pedagogy, about supporting the child, feeling how a child is doing, how it could achieve the set goals? Fortunately, the teaching team at the new school takes a more pragmatic approach and says, for example: «Yes, Noelia is a bit slower. If she can't go any further, she should go out for a quick jump.»

As dreamy children like to withdraw into their inner world when faced with external pressure, it is mainly the demands that come from outside and have to be dealt with under time pressure that become a problem:

• das morgendliche Anziehen,
• die Hausaufgaben,
• der Unterricht.

This is exacerbated when children are required to organise themselves and take responsibility for themselves - as is the case with self-organised learning, for example.

Fabienne explains: «In Year 2, Julin often sat in front of a blank page and sometimes didn't fill in much of the learning assessments. He didn't make any progress with the weekly plan either.»

The open setting at her previous school was also too much for Noelia: «The many changes and the school's approach of letting each child do their own programme put a strain on Noelia. The children even had to decide where to sit every day. By the time our daughter had chosen her seat and got her things together, there was already another task to do. This caused a lot of frustration, always lagging behind.»

Close support for dreamy children

As important as executive control and the associated skills such as planning, organisation, personal responsibility, decision-making and monitoring one's own learning progress are for the modern working world: We cannot assume that children will pick up these skills in passing just because they are asked to do so.

In schools that successfully implement self-organised learning, children are slowly and gradually introduced to this way of working and the dreamy children are closely supervised. They also make sure that the children are not overwhelmed by the amount and level of difficulty of their homework. And even in this case, self-organised learning remains difficult, as it demands precisely what causes dreamy children the most trouble.
Where the school shows little concession, parents must always take on a buffer function and think things over - perhaps together with a specialist:

• Was wird von unserem Kind verlangt? Welche (unausgesprochenen) Forderungen stehen im Raum? 
• Was kann das Kind momentan tatsächlich leisten? Wo wird es ihm zu viel?
• Welche Form der Unterstützung ist hilfreich, welche nicht?
• Und wo müssen wir unser Kind vor Überforderung schützen und mit der Aussenwelt verhandeln? 

Parents should try to recognise their child's tendency to
daydreaming as a special quality.

This requires parents to be sensitive, clear and assertive in their dealings with the outside world, accepting of the child's particularities and trusting in their ability to develop.
It is also important to focus on the child's strengths and recognise their tendency to daydream and their slowness as special qualities. Many dreamy children are creative, have a rich inner world and a lot of imagination, are sensitive and are able to find solutions to questions where straightforward thinking is not enough. Noelia's parents found their way out of their initial helplessness - thanks to mutual support in the partnership, an intensive and open exchange within the whole family, counselling, encouraging words from the paediatrician and the commitment of the current teachers.

Today they say: «We believe that our contribution as parents should be to allow Noelia to grow up knowing that she is valuable, that she is loved, that she is good as she is, and that she has strengths and weaknesses. Then she will also be an asset to other people, we simply believe that.»