following instructions

[Hayleyjane83]

What age are children supposed to be when they can follow more then one instruction at a time?

[SmartPlay]

That depends on the instruction, the distraction and how used they are to do what they've been instructed to do.

Example: My 23 months old toddler washed his hands. I tell him to turn off the water and after he's done that, I say "come down and dry your hands", which is 2 instructions. However, he does this several times each day, the time he needs to do what I've asked of him is very short and he needs to take one step to get from the stepladder to his tower, so not much chance to get distracted.
Same if I'd say "Please pick this up and throw it in the bin."

Now if I would instruct a 4 year old to "clean up the toys and then refill the cats' water" it might be too much - cleaning up takes much longer and all the toys present a lot of distraction.

It's all in the detail ;)