Why can't my child focus?

There is a test, but games and phones do not count in it. A screen delivers new input every second and rewards immediately — a child whose attention is weak can still stay with it. Look instead at a calm activity the child chose itself: Lego, drawing, a jigsaw. If it stays with that and the problem shows only with schoolwork, this is more about motivation. If it drifts away from that too, it is about attention itself.

Motivation, or attention

More like motivation

  • Stays with a calm activity it chose
  • The problem shows only with tasks
  • Performance is consistent day to day
  • Returns to work after an explanation

More like attention

  • Concentrates for long only at a screen
  • Drifts even from a calm activity it chose
  • Performance swings day to day
  • After an interruption it starts again

Staying with a game on a phone for a long time is not evidence that attention is fine — it is more a picture of how much input the child needs in order to stay engaged. Attention is not one ability but several. Staying with one thing is different from switching to another, and both differ from not being pulled away. A child may have just one of them weakened and be fine in the rest — which is why it can build Lego for an hour and not last five minutes over homework.

When it is not about attention: when performance dropped suddenly after a particular event, when the child does not sleep or breathes noisily at night, or when the deterioration is tied to one setting only. Then look for the cause there, not in attention.

How to find out which part is failing

The attention screening questionnaire covers five parts — sustaining, organisation, behaviour while learning, emotions and activity — and shows which is weakest. Only then can you tell whether a change of environment will help or whether targeted exercises are needed.

A card on this topic — free

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