‘Let your kids wear a hoodie’: Expert links to higher concentration levels

Kids love them. Parents hate them. But why wearing a hoodie could be your child’s secret weapon.

Tim Curtis on why you should let your teen wear a hoodie. Picture:Supplied

Let’s talk hoodies.

Is there any item of clothing that’s so divisive?

Teens live in them, never wash them and appear to treat them as emotional support garments in which they can cry, sleep, play video games and ignore their family. But to parents they’ve become synonymous with defiance, disconnection, occasional grunts and – among the neurotic - criminal intent.

But what if I told you that these shapeless, limp, skulking piles of unwashed fleece – the hoodies, not your actual kids – were actually a tool for brilliance?

Yes, that symbol of adolescent apathy is actually the best study device in their arsenal and it’s all down to a concept called “the closet effect”.

According to Tim Curtis, former SAS officer and author of Building Resilient Kids, if you want kids to focus they need to contain themselves in a small space.

“We discovered this a few years ago when we were looking at something called ‘the cathedral effect’,” he explains. “Basically, if you want to have grand thoughts, go to grand places – the cathedral being one – or open spaces. But when it comes to being focused and paying attention, you go the opposite way.”

That’s right if you want your kids to separate themselves from TikTok best pop them in a closet.

Well, not an actual wardrobe or broom cupboard a la Harry Potter (unless you want a call from your kid’s school counsellor) but an environment that simulates that closed-in, quiet, interruption-free space.

That’s where the hoodie is genius – and likely to make your kid one too. Because the hoodie is not only a visual “Do Not Disturb” sign. It’s a sensory shield. A wearable force field that pushes out the world and enables concentration.

Teen in hoodie at beach

“It’s called the closet effect because some of the professors and researchers doing deep work would, incredibly, spend periods in a closet with their laptop,” explains Curtis. “But it doesn’t have to be a literal closet. You can use a cap, a hoodie, a single screen – anything that allows periods of focus and deep work.”

Who would have thought that the hoodie isn’t just a fashion statement, it’s a neurological hack.

In essence all that cuddly material and confinement creates a sensory bubble and, kind of like a dog wearing a cone to stop them licking their stitches, the hoodie aids their concentration.

The revelation of the secret power of the slouchy hoodie reminds me of something brilliant the writer Caitlin Moran once said about teenage bedrooms. Instead of demanding they clean them, she suggested embracing a teenager’s room as their cocoon, a messy but safe space where they can figure out who they are.

As she wrote: “It’s their first and only place that’s totally their own: their starter kingdom. Their little cocoon. And, just like in a real cocoon, it gets messy in there. The caterpillar gets inside, seals it and then turns itself into disgusting liquid caterpillar soup, before reconstituting as a butterfly.”

Love them or hate them - Tim Curtis says there's a good reason to let your teen wear a ghgoodie. Picture: Getty

Her argument is that it’s amid the stacks of moulding plates, dying houseplants and dust that kids work out who they truly are. What you should really worry about are the neat freaks who at 16 are excited by storage solutions and labelling machines.

It’s the same with hoodies. They’re cocoons in which to do teenage business. Curtis says they work even better when paired with the Pomodoro Technique, a time management method of breaking work into an interval, typically 25 minutes, separated by a short break.

“You see apps that are all about focus timers. So a kid sets the timer for 25 minutes and if they don’t touch their phone they get a little reward – generally a plant they can nurture and grow on the screen,” he says.

Weirdly it works. I wrote this piece while wearing a hoodie and setting an app timer. Although I was rather startled when a message popped up: “Put down the phone or your tree will be killed.” Aggressive or what?

The fact is the hoodie isn’t a threat. It’s a gift. It’s the closest thing we’ve got to an invisibility cloak and while it might not help solve the climate crisis, it may help kids get their homework done and journalists meet their deadlines.

If all else fails, at least it keeps your ears warm.

Originally published as ‘Let your kids wear a hoodie’: Expert links to higher concentration levels