To expect my dd to have an attention span longer than a gnat?

[graysor]

Dd is 2.5. She has an impossibily short attention span. I cannot engage her in anything for longer than about 2 minutes (literally). This includes things like duplo, trains, Play dough, painting, colouring, glueing, sticking, dolls, small world farm, play kitchen.

Outdoors things are not much better, but she might last 5-10 mins on her scooter.

Aibu to expect her to be able to manage more than this at her age?

If ianbu any tips on how to encourage her?

Ps she will sit for longer watching peppa pig or hey duggee, but that doesn’t really count!

yabu at 2.5yo, sorry.
At least sounds like she can be prised easily out of a playground, if she gets bored so quick.

I would like to have a moan about my 10yo who seems to listen carefully but then has to ask me to explain everything all over again. Irk.

At that age ds1 could concentrate on only 2 things - story books and tv. With ds2 it was just tv. Anything "creative" was a total washout -20min set up for 5 min of play then 20min clear up. Got better after age 3.

Sounds normal. And healthy. Mine doesn't even watch tv. But then I don't encourage her to.

Thanks for the reality check. We don’t know many similar aged children to compare to, so I wasn’t really sure. I will manage my expectations!

My friend is trying to do jigsaws with her daughter. She's heard it helps with concentration (and fine and gross motor skills).

Her daughter seems way too young, has absolutely no interest and it is painful to watch.

I think I'm seeing the start of 'hot housing parenting'.

Erm... totally normal.

Why would she be anything but like that? She's 2.5

I used to teach pre-school, with young DC we (the other staff and I) had a rule of thumb that was essentially they could concentrate for their age plus 2 minutes!
So 4-5 minutes sounds about right!

(That’s not to say some of them can’t concentrate for longer on something they love, but def for something adult led I’d be impressed with 5 mins!)

Yes, a more reasonable expectation is one minute per year of age - so roughly 2.5 minutes...

Yeah YABU, but don't worry!

It's so completely normal for a child of her age to have such a short attention span, concentrating on a painting for a few minutes is a great thing. She might find things here or there that particularly interest her, but she's going to flit between activities, she's going to focus on things she loves, she needs a lot of new things all the time because her brain is developing like a sponge.

If you're doing these activities, craft and building and so on, with her - try and back off a little. Give her freedom with the paintbrush - obviously not on the walls and floor, but like a big piece of paper she can markmake on as she wishes. With Duplo, she needs to be able to spread it out, learn what she can do with it, transport it, put it places it shouldn't be... Everything she does is learning, don't worry about her attention span.

Watch what she is actually doing. :)

I just reread my comment and wanted to add, I wasn't being arsy I've never really tried to get her to watch tv so she doesn't, no particular reason, older brother watches paw patrol but that's too long for her. She just potters about flitting from toy to whatever, removing her clothes/nappy/getting in cupboards and bossing us around. They grow so fast it won't be long before the attention span is longer.

Thanks all. As I said I don’t have much to compare to, so was curious. Good to know this is completely normal!

I will bring my expectations in line with the guide pps have mentioned.

I have been trying to back off and just let her get on with what she wants. She spends a lot of time roaming around opening drawers and cupboards and trying to climb into them. But a lot of the time I get summonsed by wails of either mummy look at me! Or mummy you do it!

Hi any updates ?