November 13, 2025
Written by Dr. James Finney, MD
When other people speak in a way that is slow, halting, or disorganized, patience becomes especially hard for a distractible brain. Your mind races ahead. You want to finish their sentences. You start thinking about other things because there's not enough information coming in to hold your attention.
This is especially true when listening to children.
Children deserve your attention. They're learning how to communicate. They're sharing things that matter to them. And they're forming impressions of you that they'll carry for decades.
One way to avoid demonstrating impatience or distraction is to employ effortful compassion while they're talking.
Here's how:
Recall your own halting moments. Think about times when others listened patiently while you spoke haltingly or wandered in your thoughts. Someone gave you grace. You can give it too.
Invoke the future. When listening to a child, think about what impression you want them to have of you when they're grown and remembering what their interactions with you were like. Do you want them to remember someone who was always half-checked-out? Or someone who made them feel heard?
Contextualize the compassion. Anchor it to something real and motivating. This isn't about being a good person in the abstract. It's about this specific relationship, this specific moment, this specific human in front of you who is doing their best.
The patience doesn't come naturally. That's why it's called effortful compassion. You're deliberately invoking emotional context to counterbalance your brain's hunger for faster input.
It's a skill. It gets easier with practice. And it changes how people experience you.
Attentionful helps people with distractibility build focus skills and, when appropriate, access non-stimulant medication support.