How To Raise Children With Short Attention Spans

Posted on April 13, 2017

It has been found that parents who are easily distracted and allow their attention to wander during playtime could be raising children with shorter attention spans. Caregivers whose eyes wander a lot or appear to be distracted while playing with their child will negatively affect the child’s attention spans during this key stage of development.

The ability to sustain attention is critical for the child to succeed in intellectual and academic areas, such as language acquisition or problem-solving. Moreover, the important of this research serves to debunk the belief that attention is an individual development. It turns out that attention is affected by social interaction as well – how our individual attention influences another’s.

Also, parents and caregivers often play with their children in notably two different ways. They either leave their child to play or direct their child more. It has also been found that parents who direct their child more by holding out toys they perceive to be interesting or naming out objects cause the child to be uninterested and hence, inattentive most of the time.

The best way is to follow the child’s lead. Parents who responded to their child’s interests and supported their attention were found to raise children with better attentional skills. With that being said, as parents who want the best for our child, it is crucial to give our child full attention and respond sensitivity to our child’s interests and inclinations.


Category(s):Child Development

Source material from Psyblog