The Elephant Path: Attention Development and Training in Children and Adolescents

by Michelle Bissanti, Daniel P. Brown, Jae Pasari

The book presents a detailed discussion of the research in the development of a variety of attention skills in infants, children, adolescents, and adults; the alerting system, the orienting attention system, and the executive attention system. The second chapter reviews the varieties of dysfunctional attention in the modern Western world, with emphasis on the vulnerability of children mindlessness, distracted concentration, the problem of apportion attention across tasks, mind-wandering, reactivity, lack of coherence of mind, lack of sufficient working memory, and poor metacognitive skills. Emphasis is given to n]how multimedia, video-gaming, web browsing, and mobile devices affect attention in children. The third chapter reviews a wide range of intervention studies on training mindfulness, concentration, training to reduce mind-wandering, the effects of multitasking, and reactivity, and training to increase metacognitive skills, working memory, and executive functions. The argument is made for the importance of training sustained concentration and distraction resistance over other attention skills. The remainder of the book gives detailed instructions for training concentration skills in children, adapted to developmental early preoperational children (ages 4-6), late preoperational children (ages 7-9), concrete operational children (ages 8-12), and adolescents (age 13 plus). These instructions have been adapted from standard Buddhist concentration training, from Asanga’s Nine Stages of Staying [Concentrated], modified and adapted for Western children according to developmental age and context. The book also includes field research on how concentration and working memory training is traditionally taught to children in Tibet and Nepal.

Genres: Psychology

406 pages, Hardcover

Published December 23, 2019

Reviews

[M Spiering · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been practicing meditation based on the "Elephant Path," a meditation approach developed by the philosopher and practitioner Asanga, for some time. So as a practitioner and parent, I was delighted to learn that this book exists. It uses the same meditative approach but specifically tailored to children of different ages (from very young to adolescence) to help them develop better attentional skills, greater ease of living, and less reactivity.

I occasionally sit with my pre-teenage son, enjoying a few moments together while focusing on the feeling and regularity of the breath or imagining the mind as a vast blue sky, with thoughts passing through like clouds. I've had some nagging uncertainty as to whether these meditations are appropriate for a child his age. I was very happy to learn that for the most part, my approach aligns with the instructions given in this manual. Plus the book provides a lot more suggestions for how to meditate with children of different ages (for instance, for very young children, the authors recommend including yoga practices that engage the whole body, gradually working in exercises with the breath).

I'm not aware of any other book that hews so closely to meditation traditions that have existed for millennia and have been adapted for children according to their developmental stage and cognitive abilities (which are described in the early chapters, which, as the authors note, aren't essential reading for those unfamiliar with scientific terminology). Besides a deep grounding in these traditions, the authors have extensive training in psychology and cognitive sciences, which increases confidence in the reader that the instructions have been tailored well to the different age groups of children, especially those raised in a Western culture.

I'd give the book five stars for its depth and breadth were it not for the fact that its presentation quality is somewhat diminished by some subpar editing. This caveat affects mainly the first chapters (which have many typos and sometimes mangled sentences), in which the cognitive development of children is described in technical and scientific prose. Fortunately, the later chapters, describing the actual meditation instructions and goals, are much clearer and almost error-free. So I still highly recommend this book to parents or meditation teachers who want to instruct children and adolescents in concentration meditation.