Ep #4: Understanding Your Child’s Attention Span

Have you ever been concerned about your child’s attention span? Today I’m going to share with you about two different types of attention, how they work together and why they both matter. And then I’ll share with you a formula that you can kind of use to gauge about how along your child’s attention span should be based on their age. I’ll also be sharing some quick tips on how to get the most out of your child’s attention span. All this is coming up on today’s episode of the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast.
Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.
Well, hello there. Let’s talk about attention span today. Have you ever prepared an activity for your kiddos, spent hours getting it ready or even bought them some amazing new educational toy for their birthday or a holiday that you thought they would play with for hours and hours, it’s going to be so amazing? Only have to have them stay with it for just five or 10 minutes and then they’re done. And often they want to go play something else, do something else. And we sit there and we get kind of frustrated or thinking, oh my word, I just spent so much time getting this ready or so much money.
Or I thought this was going to be amazing. Was I doing it wrong? Did I do something wrong, or is there something wrong with my kid? And I just want to give you a little bit of comfort and support in that moment and give yourself some grace because the reality is there’s probably nothing wrong and it’s probably just that they’re developmentally not ready yet to spend more time. They probably have a shorter attention span right now than you think.
So let’s talk about attention a little bit. Let’s talk about two different types of attention and how they work together and why they’re both important. Then we’ll talk about estimated attention times that you can expect for your child based on their age.
So first let’s talk about the two different types of attention. The first kind of attention we’re going to talk about is focused attention. Focused attention is what I think we’re often thinking of when we’re talking about, pay attention, I need you to pay attention to me. Can you look at my eyes? Can you listen to what I’m saying? Can you focus on this math problem? Or can you look at this book and read these words? So this is this intense focus, our working attention. We’re putting in a lot of effort and energy into looking at something, studying it, trying to learn about it more deeply, see what it looks like, all of those things.
So focused attention is where kids are really starting to learn about a thing and put that into their brain. Now, there is a second kind of attention that works very differently and is not the type of attention that we’re often thinking about or talking about when we’re talking about attention. And that is diffused attention. So I like to think of this a little bit like being in the front of a shop. And in the front of the shop you have some specific things that people can look at. You’ve got a few things out there for everyone to pay attention to.
And then you kind of have everything else in the back of your warehouse. And it’s just back there and it’s kind of a chaotic mess going on in the back. So focused attention is kind of that front of the shop, you’re keeping it really nice in there. There is very focused of what people can look at and what they can do and buy and whatever. And then the back is kind of the crazy spot for all of the stuff to be stored back there.
So when we go from focused attention to diffused attention we’re talking about kind of where we’ve taken whatever we’ve been studying and looking at, and collecting information on, and we kind of just put it in the back, kind of throw it back there where it’s not in the current focus. We’re not really paying attention to is it. It’s there but we’re not looking at it actively. And it kind of goes in the back with everything else that’s in the back, that we’ve put in our database of our brain. And they kind of just to start to bounce around, these different things.
And kind of just, I don’t know, interact and just kind of do some stuff back there on their own without us really putting any effort or intention into that. Now, here is what’s amazing, when that’s happening the different things kind of start to connect a little bit, maybe crosspollinate and new amazing ideas and things come out of it. This is where some of our best creativity and problem solving actually comes from. And sometimes we just need to be able to let it go a little bit to be able to have ideas come to us.
And you might have experienced this if you’ve been working on something or thinking about something and trying to solve a problem and you just couldn’t come up with it. And you had to walk away and go do something else for a while. And you’re in the middle of going for a walk or a bike ride, whatever you’re doing, there’s something else and all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I just thought of the answer”, that you’d been trying to come up with before or the idea to solve the problem that you had been thinking about and focusing on so intently during your focused attention time but the answer didn’t come then.
And it actually comes when you’ve kind of let it go back into the back of the warehouse or the diffused attention time. So both types of attention are very important. Focused attention does the work to prepare us for diffused attention. If we don’t have that focused attention time where we’re really studying something, we’re really looking into it, we’re gathering information about a thing to put back into the back of the warehouse or our database back there. Then we don’t have all of the pieces bouncing around for that magic to happen during diffused attention time.
But if we only use focused attention time we don’t have the opportunity for all of the pieces to kind of mix around and get some of the more creative or crosspollinated ideas that come out of diffused attention. So they’re both very important. So how do we as parents and teachers support both types of attention? We’re going to talk about the time that we can spend on focused attention based on developmental ages, kind of give you a range to work with there.
And then we also want to make sure that we’re scheduling time, giving children time to free play, to have that diffused attention time where we’re not having them focus specifically on the same things so that can work around in the back of their brains. Now, when we talk about age based attention spans, every child is different. And their attention span development is going to differ as well. So keep in mind that this is just a very general guide so you don’t have to worry about your four year old child who doesn’t want to sit and read for an hour.
But if your child is a little bit shorter on attention span than what we’re listing here, don’t freak out. We’re just giving you kind of a general range. So here is the formula for the general range for attention span and that is that you are going to have about two to three minutes per year of life of your child. So that means if you have a two year old, their attention span is going to be about four to six minutes. For a three year old maybe six to nine, and a four year old maybe eight to 12 minutes.
If you look at this formula it’s kind of interesting because a lot of times our five year old’s are getting reading homework, they’re learning how to read and they’re getting reading homework and they’re supposed to read for 20 minutes a night. And if you do the work with this formula that is really stretching their attention span for focused attention which is why so many five year old’s tend to struggle with doing 20 minutes of reading each night.
So I wanted to give you a couple of tips for stretching or increasing that attention span, maybe just getting the most out of it and maybe even a couple of tips to help it grow and expand just a little bit if possible. One of my favorite things to do with this is to add elements of play. Play is such a pleasure thing for the brain and so it tends to give you more life. You can go longer if you add play. One of the easiest ways to do this is to add toys. And so we found when we created our reading program, Play to Read and we were helping four year old’s and five year old’s learn to read, we added toys. We added cars. We added Play-Doh.
We added all kinds of fun things to it so that they’re literally playing while they’re learning which we have found really, really helps increase the time that they’re willing to spend and that attention span. Another thing you can try is incorporating movement. Movement activates different parts of the brain and also adds interest and pleasure sometimes as well. And so this can be really, really effective in helping you get just a little bit more time out of that attention block.
I would say the third one and this one I think is so, so important is being consistent. So don’t stress if you have to keep your focused attention spans short. So these little, short blocks of focused attention even if they’re four to six minutes or six to eight minutes, do them consistently, come back often. So do it and then come back the next day, and then come back the next day. And here’s what happens is that as you do that it increases your child’s familiarity and competence with the thing that they’re learning about or focusing on.
And as that familiarity and competence increases it will often increase their interest. And with that interest it’s going to increase their ability to give longer attention.
The last suggestion is you can switch things up fairly quickly. So if you are doing a math activity for six to eight minutes then you can switch them over then to a different kind of activity, maybe a fine motor, or a literacy activity. And you can switch that out. So if you’re trying to have them do preschool for two hours, you can make that work if you are switching out what you’re doing. We’re going to move to the rug and do centers and read a story together. And then we’re going to go over to the science center. And then we’re going to go to the block area and we’re going to build things with blocks.
And so in each section or center they’re only spending maybe eight minutes in that center but then they’re rotating enough that they are changing their focus to a different thing which is allowing you to have more focused attention time. But then you’re switching out what is in the focus and then what is going into their diffused attention.
I hope that was helpful in helping you stress less about your child’s short attention span. And maybe gave you some ideas on how to work with their two types of attention, and maybe even helped you feel amazing watching your child free play knowing that their diffused attention is busy at work and still doing amazing things with whatever you were able to get in during the short bit of focused attention time you had. Have an amazing rest of your day and I will catch you next week for the next episode.
Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and listening to this episode of the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast. We are a brand new podcast which means we are harder to find than the perfect LEGO in a big box full of LEGO. And we need your help so that we can reach more moms, and parents, and teachers with this information about their children’s brains. So how can you help? You can follow this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. That would mean the absolute world to us.
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