🎯The Focus Adventure
Their body is at the table but their mind is at the window. Or the ceiling. Or last Tuesday. Focus isn't something they can just decide to do — it's a skill their brain is still building.
What's actually happening
Sustained attention develops gradually throughout childhood: a 3-year-old can focus for roughly 7 minutes, a 7-year-old for around 17 (McClelland et al., 2013). But attention is not a single skill — it includes selective attention (focusing on one thing), sustained attention (maintaining focus), and shifting attention (moving focus between tasks). Children with ADHD-type attention profiles often have strong shifting attention but difficulty with sustained attention. Barkley (2015) described ADHD not as an attention deficit but as an 'intention deficit' — the child knows what they should attend to but struggles to maintain the intention over time.
What parents usually try
"Pay attention!"
Attention is not a choice the child is making poorly. It's a neurocognitive function that develops at different rates. The instruction assumes wilful non-compliance (Barkley, 2015).
Removing all distractions
Helps in the short term but doesn't build the child's own attentional capacity. Some distraction management needs to become internal, not just environmental (Diamond, 2013).
Labelling the child as 'the distracted one'
Identity labels become self-fulfilling. Narrative therapy deliberately separates the child from the behaviour: 'You have a busy brain' rather than 'You can't focus' (White & Epston, 1990).
What actually helps
Narrative therapy reframes attention differences as a style rather than a deficit. The story character has a 'zoom' that can go wide (noticing everything) or narrow (focusing on one thing). Both modes are valuable — the adventure requires both. This reframe aligns with strengths-based approaches to ADHD (Climie & Mastoras, 2015), which identify that children with attention differences often show enhanced creativity, divergent thinking, and pattern recognition. The story teaches the child to notice which mode they're in and practise switching, rather than trying to eliminate the wide-zoom mode entirely.
How this story works
Narrative therapy reframes attention differences as strengths that need management, not problems that need fixing. The story doesn't pathologise — it validates and equips.
What your child hears
Your child's character goes on an adventure where their wandering mind becomes a superpower. The story shows that distraction isn't failure — it's a brain that notices everything. The trick is learning when to zoom in and when to zoom out.
When to use this story
When homework or structured tasks are a daily battle
When the child is frustrated with their own focus difficulties
Before activities that require sustained concentration
When the child has been told they 'need to focus' at school
As a positive framing story for children exploring or awaiting ADHD assessment
After the story
The story is the beginning. Here's how to keep it going:
“What are your Wanders like?”
“What quest can we break your task into?”
“Can you come back to your quest?”
Try this
Create a visual quest checklist for a real task
The research behind this approach(show)
Evidence-based stories for neurodivergent children using social narrative approaches, narrative therapy, and sensory-aware storytelling.
- Gray, C. (2015). The New Social Story Book (15th Anniversary Edition). Future Horizons.
- White, M. & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. Norton.
- Dunn, W. (2007). Living Sensationally: Understanding Your Senses. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.