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My (almost) 6 year old daughter has a hard time sitting still and focusing on a single task for an extended period of time. We gave her a 60 piece puzzle to work on, which she was super excited about, but only to get frustrated/disinterested after about 15-20 minutes of trying. She would go back and forth to the puzzle for 5-10 minute periods but never actually managed to finish. On the other hand, my (almost) 5 year old was given a 100 piece puzzle, and focused on basically nothing but the puzzle for two hours until she was done.

My question is basically just if this is typical behavior? If my younger daughter hadn't focused for so song I wouldn't have thought anything of it. But I want to make sure I'm not just being a dad turning a blind eye to something I should start helping her with.

MrDuk
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  • When I typically start with music lessons, the lessons for 9 years old is usually a half-hour. A 6-year-old doing 15 - 20 minutes does not sound all that alarming to me. – Neil Meyer May 29 '18 at 07:07

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That sounds about right. As a rule of thumb the attention span of a child is about their age in minutes, so a 6 year old should be able to focus their attention for around 6 minutes. If the task is interesting and novel then that goes up to around 30 minutes.

On the other hand your 5 year old is showing an unusual degree of focus.

http://day2dayparenting.com/qa-normal-attention-span/

http://www.speechtherapycentres.com/children-and-age-appropriate-attention-spans/

Paul Johnson
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