It sometimes takes extra effort to increase your child’s attention span. There are increasingly high incidences of ADHD and other disorders that are characterized by short attention spans and a seeming inability to focus. By understanding the way people naturally learn, from infancy through young adulthood, you can create a meaningful learning environment at home that will encourage a child’s attention span to increase in a natural way.

The brain is designed to learn, adapt and create connections to what is known already, assimilating the new knowledge with the previous. Problem solving encourages these connections to develop. Trial and error, applying logic and using creative thinking increase the brain’s capacity to apply problem solving to new situations.

The brain is naturally wired to help a child succeed in his present environment. What you do as parents, the experiences, expectations, tools, toys and schedules you provide, actually affect the way the child’s brain becomes wired for learning. How can you use this knowledge to help your child’s brain become wired for success? Here are five suggestions.

1. Limit TV. You’ve heard it before. Now hear why. TV programs involve quick bursts of stimuli. The style of TV shows is fast paced, from camera movements to the short intervals between action or commercial breaks. The more children watch TV, the more their brains learn to expect short bursts of attention, wiring them to learn in short bursts rather than long intervals of concentration on one task at a time. This becomes a disadvantage in school, when learning is not structured like a TV show. Likewise, most jobs do not require work in short-paced focus intervals. To help avoid your child’s brain from responding only to short bursts of stimuli, limit TV as much as possible, ideally to one or two hours per week, not per day. Even educational television suffers from this pacing problem. Encourage the child to focus on creative tasks at a leisurely pace, without interruptions every few minutes.
2. Limit detailed toys. This means toys that only work one way, or can only be played with one way. For instance, musical toys with pre-recorded music clips (which limit musical creativity), or building toys that can only be put together in a single way. rather than allowing the child to use his own imagination to create the scene. It’s also good to avoid toys from movies or TV shows, because the scripted stories behind these toys often limit how children will use them. Toys that inspire a child’s imagination include clay, plain blocks or building sets, dolls that are not from any particular movie or TV show, various stuffed animals and art supplies that encourage a child to draw, rather than coloring books or stencils. Scraps of paper or fabric and glue will encourage a child to spend time arranging his own ideas into art. You may find that the more a child needs to think, the more he will, and the more he’ll enjoy it.
3. Give time for favorite activities. In most cases, when a child really likes doing something, he will willingly spend hours completely focused on that activity. When the activity is productive, creative and involves thinking, this is excellent for the attention span. Often when a child is not focused on something it’s because he wants to be focused on something he enjoys more. Don’t let this be video games or TV. Instead, encourage a child who enjoys video games to try a difficult puzzle, or even try making one. Sudoku and other challenging games can be an excellent substitute for video games as well. The idea is to encourage the child to develop her talents naturally. If you can spend some time doing art with her, the positive association by the attention you give will add to the experience and love of creativity.
4. Make time for reading. Encourage your child to find a book he enjoys and spend at least 15 minutes reading every day. Whether reading alone, being read to or a combination of both, reading stimulates the vocabulary, imagination and focus. It also brings enjoyment. Let your child read whatever he enjoys, even comic books, as long as the content is appropriate for his reading level and age. Introduce your child to classics, poetry, sonnets or funny poems. Language development is a crucial part of education. The more it is fun, the more your child will spend time focused on it. Infants develop language quicker when they are spoken, sung and read to throughout the day. These simple things, reading, singing and speaking, help wire the brain for language, communication and expression. Try introducing books with minimal pictures to allow the imagination to be activated by the words on the page.
5. Set aside some quiet time. In our fast-paced world, children are surrounded by activities, programmed each minute of the day and expected to go-go-go. Allowing time to reflect, think and sit quietly promotes appreciation of life’s moments. This is a wonderful thing to instill in a child, and the slower pace helps round out the rest of a crazy day. Slowing down also allows a child to process the stimuli she has already taken in. This is important for the brain as well, and encourages the brain to build in connections for longer periods of attention. If your child is lost in thought, allow her to be there for a while before getting her out of her imagination. Being bored encourages creative thought, because she needs to think of something to do.