A short attention span isn’t always bad for someone’s physical health. However, a short attention span usually affects a person’s professional and social life.

Poor attention span may sometimes indicate a serious physical or mental health issue. Hence, it is always better to check it if it gets too severe. However, a short attention span may temporarily respond to extra stress in someone’s life. If medical concerns have been ruled out, here are some ways for you to help improve your child’s attention span.

Hydrate!

Yes, you heard it! Water has always been a vital part of our lives. It is no surprise that water is essential in improving cognitive function. Studies show that dehydration for more than two hours can negatively impact attention. To prevent this, ensuring your child gets enough water will help them focus on their tasks.

Stop Multitasking

Doing more than one thing at a time often causes you to divide your attention between tasks and focus less on each task. Trying to do multiple things at once often causes children to make errors and take longer to do things, even when they do them separately. Multitasking will also worsen short attention spans. They often move from one task to another if they are no longer interested in one of them. 

Start Small

You can’t expect a child to suddenly go from having a 5-minute attention span to watching a 2-hour lecture. Because of this, gradually increasing attention span will help your kid’s attention more than expecting them to have a long attention span. For example, instead of expecting them to read a novel right away, you may want to start them off with a book that has a series of short stories and poems like Anthology Of Short Stories And Poems II by Brian Clements.

Using this technique, children are more likely to gradually increase their attention from maybe one poem at a time to a chapter at a time, all the way to reading a whole novel or even a trilogy.

Meditation

Yes, kids can do meditation too! Meditation helps people focus because it helps them pay attention to their thoughts, feelings, or emotions. Frequent meditation, especially with others, will help your child calm down and focus more during lectures or class.

Physical Activity

Children with difficulty paying attention can benefit from physical activity since it can help them stay focused. Activities like sports, outdoor games, stretching, or even jumping jacks are examples of physical exercise that will help.

Attention Breaks

Most of the time, when people want their children to pay attention, they expect them to pay attention for an extended period of time. Usually, this ends with them daydreaming or thinking about other tasks after a short time because they expected to stay focused too long. Because of this, short attention breaks will help them slowly build their attention span instead of expecting them to build a long attention span all at once.

Many people use timers or apps on their cell phones to help with attention breaks. Most of the time, this means that they schedule a specific time to focus solely on the task at hand, then have a short attention break where they can do other things. Because of this, it helps children find the time to focus on one thing more extendedly, and you may even help them improve their attention span.

Play Games

Games that often pull a group of people together and force them to think and collaborate often help a child improve their attention span. Most of the time, these games can be played with family and friends rather than alone, so you may want to pull some of your old board games back home!

Chewing Gum

Studies show that chewing gum affects performance and attention. Because of the constant chewing motion, scientists say it helps them focus on one task better. Moreover, chewing gum has been proven to improve someone’s alertness and reduce dress. Thus, it can be a quick boost to help attention span.

Remove distractions

To help a child focus removing other distractions will help them focus on the task at hand. For example, if you notice that clutter in your child’s room will make them lose focus, cleaning it up will help them focus better. If the noise of a broken electric fan or light is bothering them, having it fixed will help them from straying to the thoughts of the sound that may be irritating them.