What's in this post...
Inside: Kids can seem to jump from one thing to another with such quickness. If you’re wondering how to teach your toddler focusing skills, here are my thoughts!
The ability to focus, sit still and pay attention seems to be a lost art among today’s youth.
Experts say it has something to do with the additives and preservatives in our diet, and I am sure it does. But I think it also comes down to our society’s fast-paced-instant-gratification culture.
If we help teach our little ones to focus and set them up for success, they’ll have an easier time in school, activities, and home life.
Much like other life skills, focus is learned.
Self-control is the foundation that focusing skills can be built on.
It’s the same self-control that keeps your daughter from kicking her brother, that helps her sit and wait, and focus on whatever task is at hand.
How in the world can we teach mile-a-minute toddlers to sit still and focus?
How can we increase their attention spans? Well, as the ole tortoise found out… slow and steady wins the race.
How To Teach Your Toddler Focusing Skills
It will take a bit of work, but you can help your toddler learn to focus early on. Here’s how!
Set realistic expectations
Kids can and will rise to your expectations… unless your expectations are unreasonable.
Small children are curious, observant, and excitable. It’s why they are like sponges and learn so much!
The goal is to help instill some self-control and focusing skills without stifling their curiosity or expecting them to behave like older children who have learned the art of focus.
Read: Life Skills For Kids By Age (With Printables!)
Routine and order sets the tone for the day
If your toddler is on a routine then he or she is already at an advantage.
Because of the nature of routine, one thing comes after the other and the tendency to jump ahead and back and forth is minimized.
Kids get used to doing things at certain times in certain orders and not the moment it enters their mind. This helps toddlers to focus on what is before them, knowing their needs are always met in a systematic fashion.
A child who is used to doing what they want when they want will have a hard time focusing for a period of time that someone else chooses. We are giving kids a gift when we teach our little ones to persevere with one activity through to its completion.
Kids (toddlers through elementary school) will learn everything from life management, social, survival, and hygiene skills PLUS MORE!
Routine is an easy way to give them the foundation of self-control.
Structured times (like independent play) go a long way in teaching focus
During the day there will be time for structured activities. Structured activities are activities with a purpose. Be it coloring, flash cards, crafts, or experiments, you have your child play with you for an amount of time that you choose.
You determine when the activity starts and you determine when it finishes.
If your toddler gets bored two minutes into a ten minute activity… well… you help them re-focus.
Encourage (and perhaps require) them to continue. It is, after all, a game. It isn’t like you are making them eat sour pickles. Doing this consistently helps them learn that sometimes they must go by the timeline of others.
Read: Why Kids Need Independent Play Times Daily
Make focusing fun for your toddler!
Particularly when your toddlers don’t have the hang of focus yet, make the activities fun! Choose games, crafts, experiments, and books that will give the kids a fighting chance.
Starting off with something boring will make it all the more challenging while, if it’s interesting and fun, you may be surprised how long everyone can focus.
Teach them early about how to enjoy a good Quiet Time.
Practice patience in the day to day moments
In my post on how to teach children patience I go into a few tips. Suffice it to say, it’s okay to make your children wait sometimes. I’m not talking about making your children wait for the sake of waiting.
No way!
However, making your children wait for things is not depriving them of something. It’s actually giving them something. And that something is a life skill. All humans must wait for things at times.
It’s okay to sit your children at the table and wait 5 minutes while you prepare their food and serve it. That may seem like an eternity to them, but it is not.
Times like that help your children develop self-control as they are learning to wait and spend time companionably with you while they do so.
Rhythms, Routines, & Schedules Pack
Easy to implement routines, rhythms and schedules from birth through school-aged kids to help you streamline day-to-day life with kids, including a step-by-step guide for getting started.
Learn More
Teach your toddler beforehand what you expect, then follow through
I find it immensely helpful to explain beforehand what I expect of my children. This prepares them for what’s to come and helps them buy into the rules they’ll be expected to follow.
If my daughter knows we are going to sing in church and then sit and listen , when she gets the urge to sing or talk during the message I can say quietly “It’s listening time” and it is far easier for her to comply.
Because she’s prepared.
Avoid the “All Of A Suddens”
Explanation helps children prepare beforehand and this aids in their developing self-control.
If they think they’ll be able to talk and play all they want then “all of a sudden” you impose a silent rule on them, you are not giving them time to adjust.
This will seriously test their levels of self-control and set them up to fail.
Persevere, persevere, persevere with the focusing activities
Toddlers are toddlers and they won’t want to sit still for very long. Some of my kids are born focusers, and others can barely sit still. I believe this is due in part to their personalities.
Older babies and toddlers are not born with the developmental ability to focus for long periods.
That is okay.
It is our job as parents to stick with it, persevere, keep on doing what we’re doing and know that our kids will eventually benefit from the effort they put in.
Part of what it takes to succeed academically is to be able to set one’s mind to a task. If you can’t sit still and focus long enough to study or take a test then school will be a challenge.
Get my cheat sheets (newborn up to elementary aged kids) and find your family’s groove. Use them for nap times, meal times, bedtimes, chore times, play times AND more!
For just a small part of your day, teach your toddler focusing skills!
It is a separate issue if a child has a learning disorders or other developmental delays, and of course you can’t expect the same behavior from them.
But the goal is to teach our children the self-control and self-discipline necessary to make themselves complete a task set before them.
It will put your children at an immense advantage to spend a small part of your day purposefully developing this quality in your child.
::
Loved reading this post! I was just working with both of my boys (3yrs and 1yrs) on sitting still and learning self control. They think it is fun now that we’ve practiced : )
My daughter likes it too :) I ask her to fold her hands and sit like a lady. Granted, it doesn’t last a long time, but we both enjoy it. I think it isn’t as hard as we’d think, it just requires some consistency. As it is with most things in life I guess!
I have a 2 yr 3mos old son. Im going to implement more structure for him, after reading theses tips. We put the t.v. on for him while he eats breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner… is this too distracting for him?. Is this not a good idea? He eats his food, but constantly wants to get up grin the table while eating. Every meal is a struggle to keep him put. Is this normal, or do I need to correct what I’m doing with him?
Yes, if he’ll sit at the table and eat without TV I’d highly recommend it. Id’ save TV for when he’s doing nothing but watching TV and you can use that time to teach him how to eat, manners, etc. I thin perhaps without the tv then he can learn to sit still? It depends, girl, you gotta go with your gut!
My 3 year old struggled with this. Breakfast and lunch are a little more freeform, but when dinner is served we all eat together. And that’s when he would act up. He would refuse to eat his food, get up, run, just go all out on distracting everyone. It was very much a “look at me” type of thing. So I implemented a routine for it. I gave him the run down. He can sit at the table like a big boy or sit in his room until everyone is done eating. I told him he did not have to eat his food but he was not going to get up and run around at dinner. Of course it wasn’t easy at first but I stuck to my guns. If he didn’t sit at the table he was to go to time out in his room. When time out takes place and he wanted to cry and be defiant and come downstairs, the rule was not to engage with him verbally. It was to silently put him back in his room and leave and do that over and over until he gets the message and stays. Realistically i would go talk to him after he had been calm for a few minutes then as if he’s ready to come and sit with us. And overall, it worked. When I tell him it’s time to sit and have dinner, he doesn’t try his usual circus act.
YESSSS great job, mama!
Hi Rachael,
My son (2 and 9 months) focuses really well on activities when we are at home but outside the home in structured classes it’s like he has ants in his pants and will not sit still on the mat to listen to the teacher read stories/ do a puppet show etc.
Any tips?
Thanks,
Caris
Hi Thanks for your valuable inputs. I have a 2 year 3 months old baby. He is very hyperactive child and he is not showing his attention/sitting for more than 2 mins.. He wants to run around at home it is managable but when we are taking outside especially for shopping, park or hospital. he will become hyperactive and running wanted to explore.. He is not bothered whether we (parents) are coming or not.
Could you please give some guidance and tips
Always a great read with Rachel :) I recently attended a homeschooling conference and one of the speakers touched on this a bit. He said it’s acceptable to let children listen to music for 2-3 mins (like classical or something) making them sit and be still, and actually listen, then talk about what they heard and how the music made them feel. This would be especially helpful if you have a toddler who’s really struggling with sitting, it would give them something to “do” for a minute or two! Thanks Rachel for all your wisdom!
“face-paced-instant-gratification culture”… did you mean fast-paced?
Ohhhh, thank you, fixing that now!
This was a great read especially that you reiterate: “Older babies and toddlers are not born with the developmental ability to focus for long periods. That is okay.”
Our little 4yr old boy is super active and curious. As an only child, he’s been around adults more than kids for a few years. Hubby and I both run our own small businesses and so enjoyed having more time with him at home as he grew (rather than sending him early to daycare). He started 6 months ago and loves it… but it has taken him time to get used to the social order as well as the routine of the establishment. In comparison to other kids there he is far more active, talkative and as such less able to focus….they get them to have 2 hours of quiet time where the kids are either meant to nap on a mat or “stay” on their mat and do quiet things….(hard for an active child!). The Director of the “little school” (as our son calls it) called us in recently and said that they thought we should see an Occupational Therapist to get him “checked out” and if the OT said he was “ok” then they’d look at other strategies to help him focus… we were quite upset by this because he’s only just started at daycare and therefore isn’t used to the structure…. they made us feel like he wasn’t just a normal active toddler… our GP said he was absolutely fine and your wonderful article has reassured us that we just need to give him time…. he focuses well at home on tasks he enjoys – but we know he’s not perfect LOL
Interesting you share this. I’ve found with mine who are all home a lot, with adults a lot, playing together, no screens so very active, they often seem a tad different than other kids socially. Thus far it hasn’t resulted in a diagnosis (aside from one of my sons likely having ADHD, waiting on that assessment!)