Attention Span 0-5 years
A child’s ability to sustain attention on a specific task changes quickly throughout their first five years of life. Generally speaking, experts suggest that you can expect a child’s attention span to last around 3-5 minutes per year of life.
Between birth and 8 months of age, expect your infant to have a very short attention span; they will likely spend no more than 2-3 minutes with any given toy. By the time the child is a year old, they might spend as much as fifteen minutes with a toy, although this is somewhat unlikely. It’s normal at this stage for attention to move rapidly from task to task and toy to toy. To help develop attention span through authentic play, parents and caregivers should offer the infant objects that are ordinary but only slightly different from what the child is already familiar with. Toys that are too different might be overwhelming, but things they are too familiar with will be easily dismissed. Instead, slightly alter a toy the child already enjoys playing with – try tying a string to a wooden spoon or switching from one variation of a game to another.
As the child reaches their second birthday, you can expect that they will be able to pay attention to a given task for around 4-6 minutes.
Many symptoms of attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) begin to present themselves at this stage. If your child struggles with socializing, has difficulty regulating their emotions, and seem easily emotionally overwhelmed, they may be presenting early signs of ADHD. Lots of typical toddler behavior falls within the symptoms of ADHD, but know that frequent, intense, or otherwise severe tantrums are not normal and should be cause for concern. If you don’t know why your child is upset, lasts for twenty minutes or more, and happens more than once or twice a week, this could be cause for concern. If you’re concerned about your child’s ability to sustain attention and think they might be presenting symptoms, speak to your pediatrician sooner rather than later.
Attention span should increase naturally with age. By their third birthday, your child should be spending around nine minutes on an interesting task or activity, and a four-year-old should be able to focus for around twelve minutes.
As your child reaches school age, they should regularly be able to sustain attention for fifteen minutes at a time. Remember, though, to be patient and have reasonable expectations for what your child can and can’t focus on; attention development is a skill that develops slowly over time and is one they will continue to develop well into their teenage years.
While there are many strategies caregivers can employ to help their child’s attention span progress normally. Studies have shown, however, that parents who are highly controlling and interfering during authentic play interfere with the child’s natural development, “Adult strategies that redirect infants and toddlers attentional focus are related to lower levels of sustained attention and complexity of play as compared to behaviors that maintain and build upon a child’s ongoing focus of attention”. Instead of interfering with child’s activities and redirecting them to something else, allow the child to regularly engage in authentic play that allows them to focus on things that are interesting to them. The Montessori approach can be a valuable tool in early childhood as it allows children to pursue and persist in tasks that are available to them.
Numerous studies have also shown that parents who model frequent distraction during play (looking at their phones or computer screens, for example) raise children with lower attention spans. Be sure to remain engaged with your child throughout play and provide them with play opportunities that don’t involve technology, and their attention span will grow in time.
