5 Steps to Protecting Your Child's Focus During the School Term
Expert-backed strategies that help students remain sharp in the long run.
Author: Nelson Luo (Founder & Principal)
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Around the middle of every year, it’s common that students begin to start losing focus. The early motivation from New Year resolutions begins to fade, and there seems to be more resistance to study and academic preparation.
What we have learned from working closely with hundreds of families is that focus is rarely lost in dramatic ways.
It leaks through phones on desks, inconsistent sleep, rushed afternoons and scattered study habits.
The encouraging part is that anything that leaks can be sealed, and it can be sealed through a handful of small, deliberate adjustments rather than a household overhaul.
These five steps are some of the things we share with parents when they come to us with concerns about their child’s focus.
Step 1: Set a 15-minute transition before study starts
Build a deliberate 15-minute transition after school before any study begins.
Keep screens and homework out of it entirely; the goal is a genuine reset with food, water and a little quiet. School is a reactive, socially stimulating environment, and the brain needs time to exit that state before it can enter the sustained concentration that real study requires.
When parents tell us their child resists the desk every single afternoon, this is almost always the first thing we ask about. Fifteen minutes can feel like lost time in a packed schedule. In practice, it pays itself back several times over in the quality and depth of the study that follows.
Step 2: Make study sessions genuinely phone-free
Dr. Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Attention Span, published research finding that it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully regain deep focus after a single notification interruption.
That figure is true even if the notification is never actually checked.
This is why a phone on the desk, silent and face-down, is still a massive distraction. Its mere presence maintains a background state of divided attention, because part of your child's mind stays on standby for whatever might arrive.
For students preparing for English exams, where reading comprehension and extended writing demand long, unbroken stretches of concentration, this matters far more than most families realise.
A 90-minute study session interrupted by two quick phone check-ins is closer to a 44-minute session in real productive output.
The fix is simple. All phones should go into a separate room before study begins, and it should stay there for the full block. If your child needs a device for their work, keep it to the one device the work actually requires.
Step 3: Protect sleep consistency as carefully as sleep duration
Dr. Andrew Huberman, Associate Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford School of Medicine and host of the Huberman Lab podcast, has documented that sleep regularity, meaning going to bed and waking at the same time each day, governs cognitive performance and emotional regulation more reliably than total sleep hours alone.
This is the finding that surprises parents, because most families already know roughly how much their child sleeps. But it’s hard to track how consistent that sleep is.
The Saturday sleep-in feels like well-earned recovery after a demanding week, and to a tired Year 5 or Year 9 student it certainly feels that way too.
But sleeping three hours later on the weekend shifts your internal clock in much the same way a flight across time zones would.
By Monday morning they are working against their own biology, and the first days of the school week, often the days when new content is introduced, become measurably harder.
So try to keep your child's wake time within about 30 minutes of the same time every day, including weekends. If they need extra rest, an earlier bedtime would be recommended over a late wake up.
Step 4: Get movement or natural light before school
Dr. Huberman's research on morning light exposure shows that viewing natural light within the first 30 to 60 minutes of waking sets the cortisol rhythms that govern alertness, mood and sustained focus across the entire day.
Some simple ways of implementing this could look like breakfast beside a bright window, five minutes in the backyard while the school bag gets packed, or take a walk to school if time and distance permits.
It’s amazing how much of a difference this small change can actually make in terms of the increased focus and energy you are able to attain. I certainly found it energising to feel the morning sunlight warm my face before I went head first into the books at school everyday.
Step 5: Do one task at a time
Cal Newport, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work, identifies single-tasking as the most cognitively valuable habit a student can develop. His work on focus shows that switching between subjects, tabs or tasks before finishing one accumulates a cognitive cost that stays invisible until you measure the output.
We see a lot of students who think 90 minutes rotating between maths, English and science feels productive because they have touched all subjects. Yet they retain measurably less from each subject than a student who spends 30 fully focused minutes on one before moving to the next. The rotation creates the sensation of work without the depth of it.
Teach your child to set one objective per study block, work on it until it is complete, and only then move on. This is how students reach the deeply absorbed state where difficult work starts to feel engaging rather than painful.
Small adjustments, compounding returns
You might be able to notice immediate changes to your child’s productivity when they apply a few of these techniques, like getting sunlight first thing each morning and protecting sleep. But others may take time to overcome the initial friction that is inevitable with a change in routine like setting one-task objectives and phone free study sessions.
The major takeaway is that these habits not only increase your focus, but they compound productivity over time. The more you try to implement these for your child, the more natural it becomes to perform these actions until they become second nature.
If you would like to explore more of our expert opinions and study guides, head over to our free resource bank at https://www.nlenglishacademy.com/free-resource-bank
All the best,
Nelson Luo
Founder & Principal, NL English Academy
Sources:
- Huberman, A. (2022) 'Sleep Toolkit: Tools for Optimizing Sleep & Sleep-Wake Timing', Huberman Lab [Podcast], Episode 84.
- Huberman, A. (2023) 'Using Light for Health', Huberman Lab [Newsletter].
- Mark, G. (2023) Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. New York: Hanover Square Press.
- Mark, G., Iqbal, S.T., Czerwinski, M. and Johns, P. (2015) 'Focused, aroused, but so distractible', Proceedings of CSCW '15. New York: ACM, pp. 903-916.
- Newport, C. (2016) Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.
If you found this blog valuable, share it with a parent in your network who is preparing their child for their exams. Most families only discover these strategies once it is too late. You can be the reason someone gets a head start.
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