Page 24 - Distracted Dan

PARENT NOTES Distracted Dan the Huh? What? Man
TOPIC: How easy would school, work, and all of life be if everyone would just Pay Attention?
This story is about the fact that paying attention is a Skill. It is something to practice just like playing ball and jumping rope. But paying attention it is much more important for our success in life than these other skills.
Cosmos points out that in the animal world, you must pay attention all of the time or something bad will happen to you. Humans on the other hand seldom get anything more than a reprimand when we don’t pay attention. In the story, an animal friend of Cosmos who did not pay attention was so unusual that the others made up a special name for him, Distracted Dan the Huh? What? Man.
How often must you explain something over again because someone else is not paying attention? How often do you make a mistake because you are not paying attention? You may think that no one can pay attention all of the time... but why not.
The not is because we fail to train ourselves to be attentive. Most car wrecks are the result of being inattentive. Most medical errors in the hospital are due to being inattentive. Many marital disputes are due to one or both parties being inattentive.
In the lives of children, being inattentive can cause classroom problems, missed homework assignments and poor test performance. In social situations, inattentiveness can cause embarrassment and misunderstandings. So you can see that paying attention is a very important skill but we spend very little time on teaching the skill.
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