By Aly Sutton
How to Build Attention Span and Concentration Through Play
Have you ever watched your child dart from one thing to the next and wondered how they’ll ever learn to settle in and focus? When children play in ways that encourage exploration, creativity, and problem-solving, they’re exercising the same neural circuits that support attention, working memory, and self-control. This helps them learn to concentrate, ignore distractions, and remain engaged with activities that truly spark their curiosity. Intentional, age-appropriate play is one of the most powerful tools you can use to help your child strengthen their attention span. As they grow into a digital world filled with distractions, helping your child learn to focus has become essential, without any doubt!
Babies (0–12 Months)
During the first year of life, attention is just beginning to emerge. In the earliest months (0–2), newborns can focus on a caregiver’s face or a high-contrast toy for a few seconds at a time. However, as they grow, approximately by the age of six months, many will spend up to a full minute studying a rattle or a simple, patterned card. Between the ages of seven and twelve months, you’ll notice that babies can hold their gaze on a single object for about a minute or slightly longer.
What makes play so powerful at this age is joint attention: when you sit face-to-face with your baby, hold a soft rattle whilst playing or a black-and-white flash card, and make gentle sounds or expressions, you grab and hold their attention. Research shows that when infants share a single toy in a calm setting, they maintain longer bursts of focused play and coordinate their gaze with a caregiver’s cues. If a television or radio hums in the background, however, the average length of an infant’s play episode drops noticeably. Creating a quiet nook with one toy at a time helps babies practice sustained attention.
Around the ages of nine to twelve months, offering a set of simple stacking cups or a posting box becomes especially valuable. Sit beside your child and demonstrate while talking through each step (“Here’s the small cup; let’s put it on the larger one!”). Then, let your baby explore independently. These shared moments of play during wake windows lay the neural groundwork for longer attention spans as children grow.
Toddlers (1–3 Years)
Toddlers are famously curious, but this often means they bounce from one activity to another! Play experiences structured in the right manner can gradually lengthen their focus. For starters, consider only giving your toddler a handful of toys. In a study where 18- to 30-month-olds received just four toys, those children demonstrated significantly longer periods of play with each item, naturally exploring more deeply and experiencing fewer interruptions than toddlers surrounded by sixteen toys. In other words, less can truly be more: too many toys can actually be a distraction! #ParentingSecret
As their fine motor skills develop, threading large wooden beads (or pasta) onto a thick string becomes an engaging challenge: each bead demands hand-eye coordination and persistence to find the hole. Matching or memory activities with just four to six pairs of cards, with animals, shapes, or familiar foods, also challenge toddlers to listen, remember, and concentrate on each turn. These small, focused tasks help them learn that sitting with a single goal can be fun and rewarding.
Toddlers are filled with energy, so be sure to sprinkle in brief physical breaks. After several minutes of seated play, set up a mini-obstacle course: crawl through a cardboard tunnel, climb over couch cushions, and then return to a calm puzzle or beading activity. That movement reset helps refresh their minds and bodies, and research confirms that active breaks actually boost a toddler’s ability to refocus on the next task.
Preschoolers (3–5 Years)
Pretend play at this stage is not just fun; it’s a critical training ground for concentration and self-control. When a four-year-old transforms a cardboard box into a rocket ship or cares for toy animals in a pretend vet clinic, they use their working memory, shift perspectives between themselves and their character, and resist real-world impulses in order to stay “in character.” Studies have found that preschoolers who participate frequently in social pretend play show significant gains in the same mental skills needed to focus, plan, and control impulses.
Structured play and simple rule-based games also foster growing attention. Playing a game as simple as “Simon Says,” or matching card games, or building block challenges, requires children to listen carefully, remember instructions, and concentrate until they succeed. Set up a goal or target for your child and see how hard they work to meet it!
Physical play also matters! After a ten- to twelve-minute block of seated play or a quick jigsaw puzzle (five to seven pieces), take a short “brain break” with a lively game of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” (adding claps, stomps, or silly dances). Studies show that preschoolers return to desk tasks with improved on-task behavior after such active intervals. Outdoor scavenger hunts can also combine movement with observation: challenge your child to find a smooth pebble, a red leaf, and a round twig. As they cross items off the list, they practice goal-directed searching and sustaining attention in a natural setting.
Tips for Success
- Break Tasks into Chunks: Simplify instructions. Instead of “Do this puzzle,” say, “Let’s find all the edge pieces first.”
- Praise Effort and Persistence: Even a couple of extra focused minutes warrant acknowledgment: “You spent five minutes threading beads—fantastic!”
- Create a Calm “Focus Zone”: Turn off TV or music, clear away extra toys, and pick a quiet corner for play. Fewer sensory distractions help children of every age concentrate better.
- Follow Their Lead: If your child becomes engrossed in stacking blocks or lining up toy cars, slide in beside them. Observe – if they look to you, ask, “What are you thinking?” Joint attention naturally extends how long they’ll stay engaged.
- Allow for physical breaks to help your child regulate and manage their energy levels by ensuring they have time between sitting activities to have large, full body movements.
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Respect “Daydreaming” Time: Quiet, unfocused moments between activities allow the brain to process and reset. Balance high-focus tasks with free-play pauses.
Putting It All Together
Building attention and concentration is about shaping playful experiences that gently stretch your child’s focus. A baby’s minute of shared gaze at a simple toy, a toddler’s five minutes of bead threading, a preschooler’s fifteen minutes in an imaginary café - all these moments add up to stronger “attention muscles.” Over time, you’ll notice progress in small daily steps: fewer mid-activity set-downs, calmer transitions, and moments when your child is utterly absorbed. Embrace their natural curiosity, offer “just-right” challenges, and add in some active breaks to help keep energy regulated. Before you know it, your child will move from fussy fits to focused play, developing concentration skills that will serve them well throughout school and life.
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