The Attention Drought: Why Our Children Need Our Eyes, Not Just Our Time
There’s a quiet crisis in early childhood that doesn’t make the headlines - not because it’s not dramatic, but because it’s invisible. Our children are growing up in an attention drought.
Teachers see it first.
The child who can’t sit for circle time. The one who drifts mid-sentence. The child who shouts “Look!” twenty times a morning because they just want someone - anyone - to see them.
And parents feel it too. You look up from your phone, or the washing, or the email you had to answer - and there they are, holding a picture or asking a question you missed the start of.
It’s not about blame. It’s about bandwidth. In homes and classrooms alike, attention has become our most depleted resource. Between screens, admin, and the constant pull of “just one more thing,” children are getting less face-to-face connection, and the science is catching up.
A recent Harvard study found that children exposed to high levels of screen time showed slower development in the parts of the brain responsible for focus, empathy, and self-control. The very skills they need for school readiness, and for life. and terrifyingly, we are starting to see that this delays development later in life too.
The Top Tips For Guilt Free Screen Time can help you with this and you can find it here.
Screen time has a dramatic effect on language development
Just 1 - 2 hours of screen time a day at age 1 raises the risk of communication delays by 61% by age 2.
A JAMA paediatrics study that looked at 7097 children, found that screen time at age 1 directly predicted delays at age 2. 1 - 2 hours daily significantly increased the delay odds.
2 - 4 hours a day doubled the odds
4+ hours increased the odds by nearly 5 times!
Why? Because babies and young children need the kind of back and forth conversation style interactions that they can only get from a person. Babbling, pointing, responding, ;leaving gaps, agreeing, confirming, tone of voice - all these help the engine of language and social growth develop.
Devices don’t repeat things, they don’t pause so your child can talk, they don’t respond to your child’s laughter. They don’t tailor their response to your child. No device can replace a parent’s voice in meeting a child’s cues. Devices strip away human connection.
This is not something you can get back later. They don’t just waste time - they replace critical brain building moments.
The result? Fewer words, weaker problem solving skills, slower fine motor development. This may not seem much at first, but by school the gap is wide enough to affect confidence and a child’s ability to learn, play, make friends, and form connections with new people.
Educational apps are marketing. they will not fix this - they will make it worse.
The study found that every hour a child watched a DVD, that reduced their vocabulary by 6 words….. Let that sink in….
But here’s the hope: connection doesn’t need hours. It needs moments.
🌼 Three small tips:
Sit with your child and narrate DVDs. Stop films or cartoons and talk about what’s going on. Comment on what’s happening on screen - ‘Look! The flowers are opening!’ or ‘Tigger is happy now because they’re friends’.
Next time you feel pulled in ten directions, pause for 60 seconds of full attention. Look your child in the eye, smile, and really see them. You’ll be surprised how much calm and cooperation that one minute can buy.
When your child talks to you, if you are busy, say ‘Just let me put this down so I can give you my full attention’, put the thing down, then get on your child’s level and make eye contact. Say ‘Right, I’m listening now, what did you need to tell me?’
And don’t forget that BOOKS ARE BRILLIANT! Make sure that they are available and valued as an activity. Sharing a book together is so valuable.
The Top Tips For Guilt Free Screen Time can help you with this and you can find it here.
Right - don’t have nightmares - make a promise to yourself that you will start today and make small changes.
