Listening and Attention
Listening skills are important for helping young children to understand and use words themselves. Listening not only involves hearing the words, but thinking about them too. Children need to be able to filter out other sounds and distractions, and focus their attention on the important information.
0-1 year
The child is easily distracted and attention flits from one thing to another.
1-2 years
Can concentrate on a task of own choosing, may be difficult for an adult to direct the child from this.
2-3 years
Difficult to do one thing and listen to something else at the same time. Adult needs to prompt child to stop and listen, then return to chosen activity.
3-4 years
Becoming more able to control focus of attention. Can still only concentrate on one thing at a time but more able to shift focus.
4-5 years
Can now do a task and understand an instruction at the same time. Concentration span may still be short.
5-6 years
Two channelled attention is now well established across different situations, with different people.
Children go through different stages of listening and attention as they develop. Children at an earlier stage of development or those who find listening difficult may have difficulty following instructions. They may appear to ignore you or be easily distracted; they may struggle to sit still or flit between activities. This is likely to impact the development of their other speech and language skills. Some children may require support to develop their listening and attention skills.
