How Long Can Preschoolers Focus? Attention at Ages 3 to 6

In 1997 two researchers in Israel, Sarid and Breznitz, published a study of how the ability to sustain attention changes between the ages of two and six. They watched 95 children playing freely at nursery school and kindergarten, recording how long each child stayed with one activity and how often play stopped partway. The ability to sustain attention grew until about age four and then levelled off. Older children were also more likely to come back by themselves to an activity they had left.

Many parents worry that their child cannot concentrate for long. In this post I look at what research says about attention between three and six, and then at how to work with it at home.

The “age plus one minute” rule

You will often see rules of thumb for how long a young child can focus: “age plus one minute”, or “two to three minutes per year of age”. For a four-year-old that would be five minutes, or eight to twelve.

A search turned up no study behind these formulas. The numbers seem to have taken on a life of their own.

A rule like this can be read not as a ruler for how many minutes a particular child can focus, but as a way of saying that we should not ask young children for long stretches at a time. If a four-year-old cannot sit for ten minutes, that alone is no reason to worry.

What the child is doing changes everything

The study above has another interesting result. In free play, the differences between ages were clear. But in a task set by adults, looking at pictures, the time children spent looking did not differ by age. The authors suggest that watching free play may be a more sensitive way to measure attention in preschool children.

This suggests that attention span is not a single number fixed inside a child. It changes a great deal with what the child is doing.

Children can focus for a long time on what they love. A child who will build with blocks or play with trains for half an hour may lose interest in a worksheet after three minutes. That is not unusual. With play they choose, the reason to keep going is inside them. With a task from an adult, the reason is outside. We use the same word, focus, but they are different things.

The surroundings matter too. In 2014 Anna Fisher and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University published an experiment in which kindergarten children had science lessons in a classroom with many decorations on the walls and in one with few. In the decorated room the children spent more time looking away from the lesson, and their test gains were smaller. Some have pointed out that the decorations were new to the children, so the result should not be stretched too far. Still, most parents will recognise at home that young children’s attention goes wherever there is something to look at.

When attention runs out

Stop before it runs out. One approach is not to rescue attention once it has gone, but to stop before it goes. If you say “that’s all for today” while the child still could do more, they finish wanting more. That feeling helps them start the next day.

Decide the end first. “When we’ve done three, we stop.” “When the sand runs through, we stop.” If the end is decided before starting, in a form the child can see, they know what to expect. Carrying on with a task that might never end is hard even for adults.

Reduce what is in view. Turn off the TV and clear the toys off the table. As the study above suggests, a slightly tidier setting makes it easier for a child’s attention to go where you want it.

Don’t scold. Getting up, wandering off, or starting to talk about something else is natural between three and six. Rather than “concentrate”, showing the end, “one more and we’re done”, can bring a child back more easily.

Protect time when they are absorbed. When a child is deep in something, let them be. Montessori education has long valued the sight of a child concentrating deeply on one activity. The way to lengthen attention may be less about making tasks longer and more about protecting the time when a child is absorbed.

If you are concerned

If a short attention span is causing real difficulty in daily life, or nursery or kindergarten staff keep raising the same point, please don’t worry alone. Talk to your paediatrician, a local child health service or your child’s teachers. Having someone look at your child with you can make a big difference to how you feel.

Three games and a time limit in BrainDojo Kids

BrainDojo Kids is an iPhone and iPad app for ages three to six.

The home screen shows three games each day in Today’s Training. They are chosen at midnight from games that suit the child’s age and language, mixing writing, counting, memory and more. In a way, the app provides the “three and we stop” boundary from this post. For days when a child wants to play on, there are also four Recommended games, which stay the same all day.

The parent settings have a Daily time limit, on by default at 10 minutes. It can be set from 5 to 60 minutes in 5-minute steps. While the app is in use, the remaining time is shown at the top of the screen. When the limit is reached, a screen says that today’s training is done and shows how long the child played. Time is counted for each player and resets when the date changes. Because the app announces the end, parents have to say “time to stop” less often.

The settings are reached from the Parents button on the player selection screen, through an adult gate where you press and hold inside a circle with two fingers for three seconds. There are no ads and no account to create. The three Today’s Training games and four Recommended games are free, and a Premium subscription (monthly or yearly) opens all courses and games.

Getting Started with BrainDojo Kids covers the first session, and Practical Tips for Using BrainDojo Kids Every Day has ideas for keeping it going.