Paying Attention: What does it mean for infants and toddlers?

What is “paying attention?”

Paying attention is the child’s ability to focus on a person or object while ignoring other interesting things in the environment that are competing for his awareness. It is related to the child’s developing abilities to learn and remember. In order to remember something, the child has to learn about it in the first place and in order to learn about the world, the child has to stop and pay attention. The development of a child’s ability to pay attention is very important for her later success in school and it is part of the ability to self-regulate. Self regulating means that the child actively behaves in a way that allows him to achieve a goal, without direction or motivation from someone else like a parent or a teacher; for instance, when he leaves his friends, who are teasing each other and horsing around at story time, to go sit quietly at circle because he really wants to hear the story.

Problems with paying attention are increasing in young children so it is important for care givers to understand how to help children learn this important skill.

How does a child learn to pay attention?

The ability to pay attention develops over time, like other skills that children develop as they grow from infancy to adulthood, and can be nurtured and enhanced by good care giving. Paying attention is actually a pretty complex behavior, involving several mental processes, including:

• Impulse control: how well can the child control his desire to do some other action, instead of paying attention to the task at hand?
• Motivation: how much does the child want to do the task that requires her attention? For instance, does it bring her the notice or encouragement of someone who loves her?
• Ability to control activity level: for instance, can he stop jumping around long enough to notice that his teacher is telling him how to play the game?
• Interest: Does the child have an interest in the story about trucks that he is being read?
• Knowledge: Does the child already know his colors when he is told to look at the brown dog, not the black one?
• Competence at performing the task requiring his attention: Can he draw a circle when asked?

Attention is also affected by environmental factors:

• Is the setting noisy and chaotic?
• Is the behavior of other children distracting?
• Are there too many choices being offered?
• Is the program too structured, without enough time for active physical play? Some environments that make it difficult for some children to pay attention are fine for other children. Before you label a child as having trouble paying attention, look at the environment and think about whether it is a good fit for the child.

What can you do to help a child develop his ability to pay attention?

Caregivers play a very important role in helping young children learn to pay attention. Some important strategies for teaching children attentional skills are: