What Is Stealing Your Toddler’s Attention? Ep 164

What is stealing your toddler’s attention?

If your child seems constantly distracted, overly active, emotionally reactive, or unable to stay with one activity for very long, the answer may be more complicated than simply “they need to learn to focus.”

In this episode of Talking Toddlers, Erin looks at four powerful influences shaping a young child’s developing attention: predictable daily rhythms, restorative sleep, screens and overstimulation, and meaningful play and participation.

You’ll learn why attention is not something we can demand from a toddler, why being still in front of a screen is not the same as developing healthy attention, and how sleep, family rhythms, real-life responsibilities, and open-ended play all influence a child’s ability to regulate, learn, communicate, and stay engaged.

Erin also shares why she believes we need to look much more carefully at the environment surrounding a child before quickly labeling problems with attention or behavior. A developing brain has a history—and patterns of sleep, stimulation, movement, connection, and participation begin long before a child reaches school age.

Most importantly, this is not about blaming parents or creating another list of things to worry about. It is about helping you recognize how much influence you already have through the ordinary rhythms of home life.

Because attention is not built by repeatedly telling a toddler to “pay attention.”

It grows through thousands of everyday experiences where a child is rested enough, regulated enough, interested enough, and involved enough to remain present.

And when attention grows, so do learning, connection, participation, and language.

Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:  Click HERE

📘 Download Erin’s free guide: 10 Essential Skills Before Talking

📞 Book a Clarity Call with Erin — Click here and let's talk. 

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

Transcript

Erin 0:01

even positive attention can disrupt our concentration, When your child is safe and independently engaged, resist the impulse to interrupt every few seconds. You don't need to announce, "Oh, you are playing so nicely." The moment you say it, concentration is broken. Their attention leaves the activity and shifts to you, the adult. Your praise may unintentionally end the very focus you're hoping to build and encourage. Hello, and welcome to Talking Toddlers, where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. our goal is to develop clarity, because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind. He's thriving through your guidance. We know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Attention isn't something your toddler has or doesn't have. It's something that they build one ordinary day at a time. So when your two-year-old can't sit still or drifts mid-task, maybe he seems like he never, ever listens to you, here's the truth most of us don't want to admit. We don't usually reach for a label because we're sure. We reach for it because the alternative, slowing down, building something from the bottom up, being patient month after month, feels like too much work. We simply say, "That's just who she is," or, "His dad can't attend either." A story is easier than practice. So today, I'm not handing you a checklist. I'm going to show you the quiet, unglamorous work most parents never get a chance to try because somebody is so quick to hand you a label or a diagnosis. So let's start at the very beginning. We look at young children who are constantly moving, easily distracted, maybe emotionally reactive, and say, "There has to be something wrong with that child." And sometimes there are genuine neurological differences that deserve thoughtful support. I don't deny that. However, after 40 years working with children and families, I believe we are asking that question far too early, long before we ask the more responsible questions. And I have shared with you before in the past that I closed my practice a few years ago because I wanted to go upstream. I want to help moms like you see that prevention is possible long before a label ever enters your conversation. So now I coach moms who are ready to get their toddler back on track or stay on track and help them thrive throughout these early years. So the truth is, we don't have to accept the way modern childhood has drifted into these new normals. I believe you have choices, You just need to know which path to take, and that's why I'm here. We need to ask questions like, how is your child sleeping? How much time are they spending outside and moving their bodies? How much fast-paced stimulation, i.e. screens, are they actually consuming? And does their day have any predictable rhythm? Maybe we ask things like, are they being given enough uninterrupted time to play and explore, to maybe struggle a little bit and actually feel what it's like to complete a task? Because a diagnosis without context gives only part of the picture. Let's go back for a little bit because I want to explain where I'm coming from. I started in this field back in the 1980s and early 1990s working inside a pediatric practice. That was one of my first jobs once, uh, beyond graduate school. And the doctor that I worked with, he was really one of the first in the area to specialize in attention deficit disorder, ADHD. And the truth is, he loved medicating these kids. This is when Ritalin and Adderall, they all came on the market and he was in it. My role was to run the full battery of testing, The differential diagnosing, really understanding where the breakdowns were. He, the doctor, just simply wrote the prescriptions. And it worked for a little while, but after a couple of years, I decided to leave because I was very uncomfortable. And it wasn't that I didn't really respect what he was trying to do, but I didn't feel right about the prescription being the whole plan. And so even that early in my career, I knew we were missing something very basic about early child development. Asking a young child to sit Still and listen to a teacher for hours every morning isn't kind. Because I grew up with six brothers, I knew they needed to move. I felt it was irresponsible not to also support the child's daily life and not to help you, the parents, take an active role in shaping who he was becoming And, you know, back then w- we looked at a bunch of hes, right? It was a 4:1 ratio. Boys were identified very early on as being inattentive or ADD, ADHD. So when I finally opened my own practice, I built it around physical health and development across the board, and I looked specifically at daily lifestyle. Now my lane was speech and language methodology. I understood that, but I also understood the whole child, and I understood how physical therapy and s- and occupational therapy and social psychologists helped understand this as well. Because I already knew I couldn't teach a child to talk if the body wasn't regulated enough to sit still and listen in the first place. Back then, we couldn't even say ADHD or attention problems when we were addressing kindergarten readiness. We had to wait until they turned seven. And at that time, there was a list circulating among us clinicians with over 100 reasons a child might seem inattentive, and it ran the gamut of he skipped breakfast, he had a poor night's sleep, his mom and dad fought before they left for school, his sister, threw up in the car. All kinds. He had to go to the bathroom. There are lots of reasons to be distracted. And so at that time, we were very serious before we reached for a label with these young kids, and that was with looking at that four and five and six-year-olds. And in the years since then, I have watched the whole bar of readiness, right, school readiness, continue to drop. At that time, we were looking at that seven-year-old second grader, and then it was that five, six-year-old kindergartner. Now we're looking at preschoolers and even using labels with two and three-year-olds who are deeply feeling kids, DFKs. They have big emotions. That's all over the internet these days. But what I see, this trend, is that we have gotten faster at labeling and much slower at building And the truth is, I'm tired of watching us give up on these kids so early when we're looking at a two-year-old and a three-year-old. The truth is, current guidelines don't even ask a pediatrician to start evaluating for ADHD until age four. That's what we look at now. And even then, if you look at the statistics, the average child is diagnosed at seven. Again, similar numbers back into the early 1990s. And yet, during all of these years, I have watched childhood itself change. So children began sleeping less, moving less, spending less time outdoors, participating less in ordinary family life, being entertained more from the outside, and being hurried through task after task, event after event. So I look at it as this. Kids are being surrounded by screens, noise, constant novelty stimulation, and continual interruption in our present day. Yet somehow, we are reluctant to connect these dots, we disconnect the lifestyle, their daily events, and their behavior, or their lack of ability to attend and focus. Now, let me be very clear, because I'm not saying that every child diagnosed with ADHD is actually just simply tired or overstimulated, or they need more outdoor play. I am saying we should never evaluate young children's attention, their regulation, and behavior without first examining the environment which they're developing their brains and bodies in that environment. And we certainly should not wait until that child is seven years old to begin asking important questions. Because children don't wake up one morning in elementary school and suddenly have developed patterns where they can sustain attention or regulation or control their impulses. These capacities have been developing since birth. They are shaped through sleep patterns and movement and relationships, repetition, play, participation, and thousands of ordinary experiences inside your home every day. And if you caught episode 160 a few weeks back, we already talked about how development moves in sequence, in patterns, right? That, and this is one of those sequences playing out in real time in your daily life, in your living room when we look at how attention skills are mastered over time. So today, we're gonna go upstream. We're going to look at four powerful influences on your toddler's developing attention. We're gonna look at predictable daily rhythms, restorative sleep, screens and artificial stimulation, of course, that has to be on our list, and the kind of real sustained play and participation that modern children seem to be getting far too less. Because attention is not built by repeatedly telling our kids, "Pay attention, pay attention." And being quiet while staring at a screen is not the same thing as a healthy attention span either. A screen can capture your child's attention without ever building it True attention develops when your child's body is regulated enough to notice, remain engaged, share an experience, and even solve a problem. And then true attention means that they can return when something briefly pulls them away, when they can shift gears in real time. That's a critical piece. Attention is the doorway to learning. It's the doorway to connection. And it's one of the earliest foundations in language development. So let's talk about what may be stealing your child's ability to develop attention or at least highlight these things for you so you don't miss it. And then what can you do to begin doing it differently today? Let's start with something that may not sound nearly as urgent as screens or behavior or even that big attention diagnosis. Let's start with something that is totally in your control; routine. And more accurately, I refer to it as a rhythm. Because when I say routine, I don't mean that every minute of your toddler's day needs to be scheduled, and I, I see that online a lot, too. I, I also don't mean that, like, breakfast is served at 7:05, and then we get dressed at 7:25, and then we're all, ready to go out the door at 7:45. No, that's not it. That's not real life for babies or toddlers or even preschoolers. But a predictable rhythm simply means that your child begins to recognize the general flow of their family life. We wake up, we open up the curtains, we get dressed, we make breakfast, we clean up, we go outside. The exact timing may change, but the sequence feels familiar, and that familiarity matters to the developing brain, to the developing child. Think about how we feel when, say, we're traveling and we're very unfamiliar with the town or the location, right? We're looking for the correct road. We're checking our GPS. We're watching the signs. We're trying to figure out and we're not quite sure, are we in the right area? Where am I gonna park? Where's the entrance to this event? And, and will I be on time? Am I running late? So even when nothing is actually wrong, part of our attention in those new, novel experiences continually scan the environment. We're always looking to figure out what's gonna happen. Well, your young child is living with far less knowledge and far less control and understanding of the world around them. And, and we get uncomfortable in those situations. So nearly everything your, your baby, your toddler, your preschooler's doing is new to them. They don't fully understand at all about time, right? They don't automatically know what will come next. They can't relate it to what it says on the clock. They don't understand why you are suddenly putting your shoes on or asking them to stop something that they just kind of sunk their teeth in and they're getting deeply involved. When your child's day is continually hurried or interrupted and changed, we don't really look at it as being unpredictable. We have a plan in our heads, but they don't understand that yet. So your child may need to use more of their mental capacity, their mental bandwidth, just to regulate themselves, just to keep up with the expectations, right? And so when, when the body is working that hard to regulate, then there's less capacity, less mental energy physically, and emotionally, and mentally available to attend and to participate and to really build good, healthy learning. So this doesn't mean that every unexpected change will push your child into this dramatic fight or flight response. I'm not saying that. Because children are adaptable, but they build even that skill of adaptability when they've lived enough life with predictability, We know that life throws curve balls, Plans can fall apart. Your baby can refuse to take its nap. Somebody might spill the milk as you're trying to get out the door. The goal is not perfection. The goal is to create enough predictability that your child genuinely understands how his life works inside this family Because when the sequence is familiar, your toddler does not have to continually ask with their body and their behavior, "What's gonna happen?" You know, "Where are we going? Why are we doing this? Why are we stopping, or why are we moving? Why can't I sit and look at the leaves blow across the street? What's gonna come next? How do we... H- what do you want from me?" Predictability leaves room for that participation, and participation supports your child's ability to build his attention. And I saw this in my own family. My daughter, praise God, was an early riser. Very early. And I know many parents are frustrated when their child naturally wakes up early, and that's not who they are. But in our family, it worked because we were all early risers. So rather fighting against her natural rhythm, we built our mornings around it. We had time together. We were not immediately rushing from her sleep into getting dressed or breakfast and getting the shoes and getting out the door. There was a flow to our morning every morning. We ate breakfast together. She began helping with small parts of breakfast, and over time, she learned the sequence of getting dressed. She learned what she needed to bring for that day. "Oh, today's Monday. I need this, this, and this. Today's Friday. I need that, that, and that." Eventually, she could gather her things and get her backpack together. But I want to emphasize the word I used there: eventually. It didn't happen all at once. It wasn't like I handed her a checklist one week and the next week, I expected her independence. Those skills developed over years of repetition and building them out together, supporting her, and practice. The calm morning helped make that learning possible, and she could remain within the sequence because the sequence was familiar. She could pay attention to what came next because her brain was not being hurried through a different routine every day This is one of the hidden benefits of finding your own personal family rhythm. It does not simply make the morning easier for the parent, it organizes your child's experience. They feel it. It's coded. It also creates natural opportunities to build language. We talk about what comes first. Oh, we get dressed. What, where does your shirt go? Goes over your head. Where are your socks? How many socks do we have? One sock, two socks. Will you please bring your cup to the table? Put the spoon beside the bowl. Hey, where is your backpack? Those words became meaningful because they were connected to familiar actions. So your child doesn't learn vocabulary or memorize random vocabulary. They hear language inside their experience, and that's what's building their understanding. They know what is happening. They know where things belong. They begin to anticipate what comes next. And that anticipation is part of learning So begin by looking at the natural anchors in your child's day. They can be your waking, Your sleep cycles, your mealtimes, getting dressed, going outside, a, a bath time, and bedtime. Those are your anchors. You don't have to control every single moment between these anchors, but those anchors give the day dependable structure that says to your child, "Oh, this is how our family works." And then you can participate inside of that. You have time to learn and rest and relax between these expectations, these anchors. And you are not simply being dragged from one activity to another, and I think a lot of little kids feel that way nowadays. So put routines or a rhythm on your radar and begin to think about how it feels to your little one, two, three, and even four-year-old. So let's move on to the second influence, and that is around sleep. And honestly, I continue to be surprised by how often sleep is treated as a side issue when adults are concerned about their child's behavior or their attention, their learning capacity, and their ability to self-regulate or tolerate, you know, emotional frustrations, and how little sleep is actually addressed, and how we just kind of push it off to the side. I have always felt that sleep is foundational. In adults, you and I know what happens when we miss a couple of nights of good sleep, right? W- we're less patient. We become irritated much more easily. It's harder to concentrate. We forget things. Small problems all of a sudden are these big, huge breakdowns for us. We reach for caffeine or food or even noise to stimulate and help keep ourselves functioning. But then we look at our little toddler who's exhausted and rundown, and we expect them to listen and transition, to share, right? We expect them to regulate their own impulses and remember directions, to tolerate frustration or disappointment. We expect them to sit at the table and learn new words and, and learn their table manners. But the exhausted child can't consistently give us attention that they don't have, period. Okay? Sleep supports the brain systems involved around all of those things. It supports attention and memory, emotional regulation, planning, and impulse control. It supports it for you and me. Why would we think it doesn't impact our child? I look at it as the air or the oxygen that learning and attention and sharing live in. And those abilities are not separate from language development. Language development requires your child to notice things, right? They must notice your face, notice how things change, notice that you're pointing to something or commenting on something, notice the object that you're naming, hold the experience in, in their mind long enough to then connect the words with it, and then remember later on. That's what true learning is in real time. That's a complex neurological process. And when your, when your toddler is chronically tired because of lack of sleep or poor sleep consistency, they may still hear your words, but they're not gonna be available to process them, and learn them, encode them, and then use them, They're gonna miss your gestures and your subtle signs. They're going to maybe even look away from you. They may become frustrated before the whole interaction or experience that you're trying to share with them is ever completed. They, they will jump from object to object because their regulatory system is struggling to maintain engagement. so they may appear impulsive or oppositional, hyperactive, emotional, inattentive, all of those terms, those labels we readily throw out. So this is why I feel so strongly that we should never evaluate a young child's attention, regulation, or behavior without asking, "How is your child sleeping?" And we don't simply ask, like, "What time does your kid go to bed?" We say things like, "How long does it take them to fall asleep? How often do they wake in the middle of the night? Are they breathing comfortably through their nose, or are they open mouth breathers? Do they snore? Does it interrupt their sleep cycles? Are they restless during their sleep or in the morning? Are they waking unusually early? Are they difficult to actually wake up in the morning?" I've seen that over and over again, Do they seem restored? Are they rested when they wake up after 12 hours of sleeping, What happens to the behavior later in the afternoon? Do they still need a nap, right? Has your family accepted chronic exhaustion as just part of your child's personality? Because I hear parents say that all the time. "He's always been grumpy in the morning," or, "She just wakes up kind of angry. He gets wild when he gets tired. That, that's just who he is." we might say perhaps, right? Temperament is certainly real. We have different temperaments. But before we decide that chronic irritability, disorganization, or frantic behavior is simply your child's personality, don't you think we should become a little more curious? Maybe play detective. Observe day after day on purpose, right? Collect some data. What's the pattern here? What does the behavior, or when does that behavior actually occur? What happened the night before? How much sleep did your child actually get? Not how long were they placed in the crib, but how long did they actually sleep? And is there a difference after they do have a good night's sleep, after they're rested well? Do you see their whole demeanor change? Is there a difference after several consistent good night sleeps? Is there a relationship between poor sleep and the behavior everyone is so worried about? These are questions that should be asked and are rarely asked let me review this study that's kind of floating around here on the internet these days. it's a large study that looked at adolescent brain cognitive development. It's called ABCD Project, and they really followed over 11,000 9 and 10-year-old kids, and they measured sleep duration against brain structure directly. They looked at that association. So even a seemingly minor chronic deficit in their nightly rest, and they really looked at 40 minute less sleep, that they showed visible changes in their brain scans, right? These children who slept less showed measurable differences in the very regions responsible for attention, planning, and impulse control. Now, we do have to recognize that this research involves older kids, right? 9 or 10-year-olds. But development doesn't suddenly begin when your child reaches school age or is assigned into a lab study, right? A seven-year-old's nervous system has seven years of history, so their patterns of sleep and regulation, movement, stimulation, and attention have been developing for years. A child does not wake up at seven and suddenly arrive with no developmental history behind them, They've been looking at these patterns for seven plus years. So babies and toddlers are not less vulnerable because they're younger. They're actually quite more vulnerable. They are in the thick of it, of building the very systems that will later be expected to support their school days, Build relationships, expand their language, build self-control, and learning across the board. The research may not yet answer every question that we have about babies and toddlers, but research often falls way behind real life. So clinicians and parents see patterns long before every variable has been isolated in a controlled study. We still need to be accurate, and we still need to look at these studies and take what we can to understand what's happening in real life. So I want to caution us here that we should not claim that one study proves something when it doesn't, and very rarely does a study prove absolutes. But we also should not pretend that we know nothing simply because every possible connection has not yet been measured, right? Development begins at birth. Patterns begin early. Sleep matters from the get-go. Regulation matters early. The daily environment matters early. Sometimes what appears to be an attention problem, air quotes I'm using, may be a child whose brain is continually being asked to perform without enough restoration. What was noted in that sleep study was that the difference was only 40 minutes. 40 minutes less sleep may not sound dramatic to an adult, but small deficits repeated night after night are not small to our children. They become part of your child's daily neurological environment. That question may take you much further upstream. Sleep routines naturally become a solid anchor and part of your daily rhythm. So let's start there. Now we need to address the elephant in the room: screens. And I know this is a big, hot topic, and I want to begin with one of the most important distinctions in this entire conversation. A screen can capture your child's attention without building attention. And I said that earlier, and I will keep saying it. Parents often report to me, "But my toddler focuses beautifully on the screen." Perhaps they sit completely still. Perhaps they barely blink. Perhaps you can call their name several times, they don't even flinch. That can look like remarkable attention, but being visually captured is not the same as intentionally sustaining attention. Healthy attention is active and flexible. A child notices something and then chooses to engage with it, to explore it, shifts attention when necessary, and then returns to the activity. They can also share attention with another person in this environment. They begin to tolerate when and how to take a pause and go back to what they were doing. They, they begin to solve problems inside this activity. So true attention persists when something does not immediately work. They try another way, too, and, and that's where that, that sustained attention really blossoms. Screens do much of the attentional work for your child. The picture moves for them. The screen or the scenes themselves change. The music intensifies. A new character will appear. The sound tells your child where to look, what to focus on. Something bright flashes in front of them. Another image immediately replaces the last one. The content continually pulls your child's nervous system forward and sucks them in. It's designed to do that to you and me as grownups and definitely to a young, small, innocent child. Your child does not have to generate and sustain that attention in the same way when the screen is in their face because the stimulation repeatedly recaptures it from the outside in. There's no thinking process That is very different from sitting with a wooden spoon and a couple of bowls, right? There's nothing flashing. There's no lights or songs. Nothing automatically changes. Your child must create the experience. They bang the spoon a couple of times, flip the bowl over. They might drop it, crawl over it, pick it up again. They explore, right? They look toward you and they want you to engage too. They want to share that moment with you And so all of that with the spoon and the bowl and, and the, the quietness in that, that looks a lot less impressive to most adults, and I get that. But your child is doing much more of the developmental work. And the concern with screens is not just limited to what your child is watching either. We must also ask what the screen is actually replacing, and there's a lot of study in this area at this time, right? Your young child has only so many waking hours, and time spent looking at a screen is time not spent looking at your face or other people, not moving in this three-dimensional world, not climbing, not manipulating real objects, not figuring out how lids work and knobs turn and latches work, not watching what happens when something falls and rolls down the hallway, not experiencing that back-and-forth rhythm of real conversation and real sharing, not discovering what happens when, when they gesture or they vocalize or smile or protest, right, or they just turn away and there's another human being on the other side that responds That's effective. Language develops inside that responsiveness. A person will actually say something and your child reacts. The adult notices, and then maybe adjusts their communication. Maybe the, the adult turns around and waits and looks at them, and the child tries it again. The adult responds differently because the child responded differently. That's a true exchange. That's at the core of all of this learning, life, and humanness, right? Even when a program looks interactive, when the character might turn toward the camera, right? You see those shows ask a question and pause for a split second. But the program can't genuinely respond to your child, 'cause it's not real. There's no depth. It's a two-dimensional flat screen. It continues with the same script, whether your child answers or cries or turns away, points, you know, says something completely unexpected. The screen cannot follow your child's attention. It cannot notice that your toddler is interested in the dog in the corner instead of the silly character on the screen. They can't adjust. It's not real. You know this. It cannot think, "Oh, well, she didn't understand that. Let me slow down." It can't wait longer because your child needs more processing time or wants to think about it for a second, right? it can't delight in your child's imperfect attempt and then build on that interaction and expand upon it. Only another human can do all of that, and you know this to be true. And that responsiveness is not simply a pleasant extra. It is central to early development, early communication, period. You may have recently seen a study, another recent one, but it came from 2019, and it's circulating again on the internet, and some of the language being used to describe this is kind of dramatic. And I always read through the fine print, and I try to put it through a very realistic lens. So people are saying that the researchers proved that screens cause white matter loss or visible brain damage in young children. and I don't know if you have seen this heading, but I see it all over the place. And trust me, that caught my eye, too. But that is not precisely what the study established, and so we need to be accurate, and I want to explain it to you so you take what is important and then, you know, take the hype with a grain of salt. But Because of this, I don't want you to think that we can just disregard the results either, because I want to take a closer look at it with you. So the researchers studied 47 children between the ages of three and five years of age, and they used a specialized form of the MRI to examine the organization of white matter pathways in the brain, and I'll talk a little bit about that. But they also assessed skills related to language and emerging literacy because they go hand-in-hand. Now, parents completed a questionnaire examining their child's overall pattern of screen use, The researchers found that higher screen use scores were associated with lower measures of organization and myelination in white matter pathways, and these are the pathways that support language, executive functions, and early literacy. It's all right up my alley, so of course it caught my eye as well. So let me just give you a little snapshot. White matter is part of the brain's internal communication network, and it contains nerve fibers that carry messages between different parts of the brain. It's very important. Myelin acts somewhat like an insulation around an electrical wire, It helps those signals travel more efficiently. The more myelination, the more efficient and fast these nerve fibers can travel and communicate with one another. The study did not prove that screens directly caused the differences seen on these scans, but there was a strong association, and we have to respect that. The researchers did not assign one group of children, who looked at two hours of screen and compared them to measurable damage occurring during these, these windows. That distinction matters, right? They, they looked at the questionnaire that the parents were given and then scanned the children. But We should not use the absence of proven causation as permission to actually dismiss all of the finding. We need to find what was honest and real and continue to study in this area. So this was a measurable pattern involving young children who are developing brain pathways and the abilities related to language and learning. So we have to take a close look at this. We don't need to exaggerate it, but we do need to understand it. And what we don't yet know exactly is how much of that association may come from the screen experience itself and how much may come from everything else that screen replaces, right? So my answer is that we should be concerned about both. Perhaps some of the association reflects lost conversation, lost eye contact, lost movement, lost outdoor time, lost manipulation of real objects, lost sleep. We just talked about all of these things. Lost opportunities to become bored, to initiate their own ideas, to solve a problem, or to remain with an activity and work through the problem. Those losses matter. But we also cannot automatically assume that the screen experience itself is neutral, because we know that's not true either. The pace, the bright lights, the sounds, the, the constant novelty, the rewards, the continual scene changes ask something very different of the developing nervous system than what the real world will express to your child, right? Real play looks very different than the screen So I'll be honest, we don't yet know the exact contribution of every variable, and this is time for study. This is time to really be honest with ourselves. But for a baby and a toddler, neither explanation is really reassuring. If characteristics of the screen experience influence development, caution is warranted. And if the greater concern is that everything screen replaces, caution still needs to be warranted, right? Either way, your child loses something developmentally important. So here's something else I think worth understanding. Myelin, that fatty sheath that insulates a growing nerve fiber, we know develops fastest in those first two years of life. That's where it really comes on board. It's what allows messages in the brain to travel quickly and accurately. Myelin sheath is no small thing, and it doesn't develop randomly. It actually follows a very specific pattern. It, it starts in the brain stem, moving outward and upward. It tracks almost exactly the same way a baby's physical and cognitive milestones unfold: lifting the head, reaching, crawling. Eventually, the more complex work of language and attention and emotional regulation come online as this myelin is more and more established. So myelination isn't purely automatic either, and I learned this early in my career, but it responds to the experience of your child every day, movement, conversation, the real back and forth that language supplies, right? Even nutrition plays a significant role in the development of myelin. So when a study finds an association between screen use and myelin organization, that's not coming out of nowhere There are many variables that shape how this insulation develops, and it would be unreasonable to assume screens are the only one. But it would be just as unreasonable to assume they're not one of them at all, that screens aren't an impact. This is why I will not reduce the entire conversation to things like, "Well, is 30 minutes acceptable? How about, like, one hour a day?" And, "Which programs are educational? Those are okay, right?" Now, don't get me wrong, they're understandable questions because that's what, our American Academy of Pediatrics, that's what those guidelines stipulate. But they are not the first questions I ever have and the, the questions that I put before you. I want you to ask, What does my baby or toddler need to be doing during these rapidly developing years, these pivotal years that are laying the foundation for everything?" They need to move. They need to touch a lot of stuff safely. They need to carry things and climb. They need to watch faces. They need to hear real voices. They need to learn how to initiate and respond, wait, play in a wide variety of environments They need to learn how to participate and be a- an active member of their little family And communicate with real human beings who alter their response according to what that child does next. that is nurturing the development of myelin sheath. for babies and young toddlers, I encourage families to create screen-free rhythms. Not because I believe mothers must be perfect, and not because one accidental glimpse of a television show is gonna damage your child, And not because I fail to understand how difficult modern parenting can be for you. I take this position because babies and toddlers have an enormous amount of developmental work to accomplish and master in a remarkably short period of time. They need us, the real faces and real voices, real movement and objects and waiting and frustration real connection. And I believe parents are capable of holding that boundary. Now, our daughter did not watch her first movie until she was three and a half, and that was not a cultural norm. We were seriously criticized. People thought we were extreme, family, friends, my best friends. But we held the line because we believed the early years mattered. You do not have to copy every choice my family made, but I want you, all moms, to know that reducing or eliminating screens in the early years is possible, and you're not a freak for asking it or trying it. It requires planning, yep, and it requires tolerating protests. It may even require changing your adult habits, 'cause that's a lot of pushback I hear that. It might require leaving a restaurant earlier because they're done with that experience, and you don't want to put a screen in front of them. It might require bringing a few simple objects for your toddler to explore. It might require allowing your child to be bored for a little while in the back of the car. Imagine that. Boredom is not an emergency. Boredom often becomes the doorway to initiative. Your child begins looking around, starts to imagine things. They notice the napkin. They watch people, right? They start stacking sugar packets. They point to things out the window. They begin to learn how to interact and have a conversation with you around the dinner table. Their own attention starts to organize itself. So when you evaluate screen use, do not ask only how many minutes. I want you to ask, "What is this replacing? What happens to my child afterward? Can my child still engage deeply in the ordinary play that he has? Can they tolerate slower experiences? Can they participate at the dinner table? Can they wait briefly without immediate meltdowns or needing entertainment?" Can they notice the quiet world and be okay? Screens may capture their eyes, but our goal is not to simply produce a child who can stare into busyness. Our goal is to nurture your child so they can begin to notice things and engage and think and participate and, and be a part of their community and express themselves with ease And turning off a screen does not automatically build attention. It simply gives attention somewhere else to go. So the next question is what we offer in this place, right? How do we actively help attention develop, They're bored or you don't have the screens in front of them. How do we make this happen? And it's really through meaningful participation. For a baby or toddler, the most natural form of meaningful participation is play. It's what we call play, Not adult-directed performance, not flashcards, and certainly not apps, right? Not quizzing, not being repeatedly asked, "Oh, what color is this?" Or, "What sound does the cow make?" Or, "How many blocks are you building with?" Right? Real play. Those questions are appropriate and, certainly usable, but they need real play. When children are genuinely interested in what they are doing, attention begins to organize around that interest, whether it's digging in a mud puddle or playing with blocks or coloring or just taking lids on and off of Tupperware. This is why following your child's lead is so powerful. Imagine your toddler is building a tower, and our adult instinct might be to go over there and we might say things like, "Oh, let's make it taller," or, "Put the blue one right here," or, "Let's turn it just this little bit. Honey, can you say block? Say yellow block. What color is this one? This one is yellow. What's this one? How many blocks do you have?" So all of those questions, we think we're helping. And again, sometimes that is appropriate. But without realizing it, we may actually replace your child's idea with our own. And then the play becomes a lesson, right? Your child's attention shifts away from the blocks toward the adult who's trying to manage or teach something, So what I want you to consider is just, just sit by, be near, observe. Perhaps build a small tower of your own without any commentary, Copy what your child is doing. This is parallel play. This is what they like, right? And then wait. Maybe you can introduce one small possibility. Maybe pick up a car, drive it around your tower. Maybe crash the car into the tower, and then just pause. Nothing elaborate. No, you know, bombardment of questions Do not immediately show your child what they are supposed to do. You have simply just offered an idea. You've introduced a car to the situation. See how he responds. He might copy your actions. He might laugh at you. He might completely reject it and tell you to go away, He might take your tower and add it to his. That's all right too at this age. All of those responses give you information of where his play is. Just watch it. when you follow rather than dominate, your child remains the thinker, And this happens because the play still belongs to them. They are more likely to remain engaged. This is the same muscle I talked about back in episode 162 when we went over joint attention. When you follow instead of direct, you are building the very thing that language can grow out of. It's the soil. This is also where language grows naturally. It's not contrived. It's not random or memorized. ABCs, Or let's count to 10. You do not need to narrate every movement. You might say things like up, up, up, and then crash, and just look at the car, and then wait. So simple language attached to shared attention is far more meaningful than continual stream of adult words that your child really isn't processing or attending to. Sometimes the most supportive thing any parent can do is stop talking And I know that's hard to hear, but it's true. Just remain nearby and allow your child's idea to continue to blossom. See what happens. I know it can be difficult for a lot of us. We have been told to stimulate, right? To teach, to praise, to narrate your day, to entertain. But continual adult input can become another form of interruption, like the TV screen or the TV in the background. I want you, for a second, just try imagining you're trying to write a paper, or you're trying to garden, or you're really, you know, trying to create this new recipe that you've never done before and it's kind of complicated. Maybe, you know, you're a tinkerer and you're trying to repair something, and yet there's a person standing next to you and this is what they say, "Good job. Keep going. Hey, what are you doing for that? what color is that? w- why are you doing that? You are working so hard. Wow. Tell me, what do you do next? What comes next?" Can you imagine? So even positive attention can disrupt our concentration, and the same is true for your toddler. When your child is safe and independently engaged, resist the impulse to interrupt every few seconds. You don't need to announce, "Oh, you are playing so nicely." The moment you say it, your child will look at you, and concentration is broken. Their attention leaves the activity and shifts to you, the adult. Your praise may unintentionally end the very focus you're hoping to build and encourage. So just be present, protect the moment, and connect afterwards And another easy adjustment that's totally in your control is to look at the number of toys surrounding your child. More is not always better. And I have referenced a study through the University of Toledo before, where they looked at 18 to 30-month-old children, and one group they gave four toys, the other group they gave 16 toys, and there was a significant difference between the two groups. The four-toy group played with each toy roughly twice as long and explored more ways of using it. And the truth is that makes sense. A room full of toys can create continual visual invitations and distractions. "Oh, play with this. Look over here. What's this underneath? Try this. Toss it aside, right? Your child moves from object to object without entering deep concentration, never really fully experiencing any one of the toys, right? Fewer toys reduce the competition for their attention. Your child has time to discover, huh, what's possible with this object. So think about rotating toys, Choose objects that can also be played with in more than one way, Open-ended: bowls, cups, dishes, scarves, animals, blocks, cars. You know, lots of opportunity, Safe kitchen dishes and utensils. Natural objects appropriate for your child's age that they can manipulate So invite them to explore. And the play doesn't always require toys, right? Cleaning objects and tools that are safe for them to play around with. Real family life is filled with opportunities to also develop attention, Let's learn how to get dressed. There's a lot of attention there. Putting on those shoes, or carrying a diaper to the trash. Placing a spoon beside each bowl. Wiping up small spills. Dropping clothes in the dirty laundry basket. Helping wash vegetables. Carrying napkins to the table. Packing a small bag. Putting groceries away. The list is endless. All of it requires attention. These tasks require your child to remain with a sequence long enough to accomplish something that's meaningful. They have a natural beginning, middle, and end. The sock is off. The sock goes on. The task is complete. The cup is carried. The cup is placed on the table. The child contributed. These experiences support attention, motor planning, problem-solving, language comprehension, following directions, resilience, and confidence. But your child must be allowed to do the work themselves with very subtle support, and that is where modern parents often struggle. Because you and I both know it's faster to do it just ourselves. I get it. Of course it is. You can put your toddler's shoes on in 10 seconds. Your toddler may take four minutes, place the shoe on the wrong feet, become frustrated, remove it, insist on trying all over again. Have you ever really watched and waited for a toddler to try to zip up his coat? That could take half a day. Some mornings you truly need to get it over with. I get that. But if we take over every time because it's just easier and faster, your child never receives enough practice to actually become capable. I can't tell you how many kids I have witnessed at five, six, seven, and can barely put their shoes on or figure out how to put their jacket on. Efficiency is not always the goal in family life. Development requires time and patience. Children build attention by remaining with a manageable difficulty. They try, they make an error, they adjust, they look to us, we offer a little support, then they try again. That is not wasted time. That is the work of childhood. When we continually rescue our children from the effort of ordinary tasks, we may unintentionally remove the very experiences that build persistence. And then later, we become concerned or frustrated that our child gives up easily or can't stay with a challenge. They're easily frustrated. Again, we have to connect the dots. It's not that complicated. We have to be able to let go enough and look at the truth. Attention is not developed primarily by demanding stillness or focus. It doesn't just pop out of thin air at 7 or 10. It develops when your child has a reason to remain engaged. A tower that they want to finish, right? The, a shoe that they want to put on by themselves. A bowl that they were trusted to carry all the way to the table. A small problem they are, are allowed to solve. So let them take time. Let them struggle within safe limits. Let them experience the satisfaction of completing something. That is huge with a two-year-old, a three-year-old, a four and five-year-old. That is how competence grows, and competence changes a child. That child begins to understand, "Hey, I can work through something. I can solve a problem. My actions have an effect. I have a place in this family. I'm important." That is the kind of attention we want to develop. Not attention created through constant entertainment, not compliance produced by fear, and certainly not stillness produced by a screen, but a growing ability to remain present, engaged, curious, and connected. So when your toddler appears constantly distracted or unable to sit, emotionally reactive, or continually moving from one thing to another, I don't want our first question to be, "What's wrong with this child?" I want us to step back and look at the whole child and the whole life surrounding him. Is his day rushed? Are they sleeping deeply enough? Is their attention being captured by fast stimulation more than it's being built through slow, real play? None of these questions deny that genuine developmental or neurological differences exist. I am not saying that. They simply refuse to examine a developing child in isolation. And after several decades of working with children and their families that love them the most, I am no longer willing to pretend the environment is a minor variable. The environment is where development happens. This is not about blaming moms or blaming families. Modern parents are surrounded by noise, and they're told that a screen is educational, that more toys mean more enrichment, that every moment should be filled, that your child who resists or loses focus must have something wrong with them You're getting endless information and very little wisdom. My responsibility is to help you step out of that noise and look again at your beautiful, innocent child right in front of you. I bet your toddler's attention isn't deficient, but it might be exhausted or under-practiced or drowning in novelty. It may even be he is still so very young and developing the capacity, and we are just expecting far too much from him. True attention is built through thousands of ordinary experiences in which your child is rested enough, regulated enough, interested enough, and involved enough to remain present. It develops when your child knows what comes next, when they have slept and slept well, when the world slows down, when the adult stops performing and asking questions, and when the toys are reduced, when the screen is turned off, And when your child is allowed to carry something or finish something, try something again and discover, "Hey, I can do this all by myself." And when attention becomes stronger, learning becomes stronger. Participation grows, connection grows, language grows. Because before your toddler can use words effectively, They must notice your face and your gestures and your voice and the objects that you're sharing, the meaning inside that moment. availability is precious, and protecting it may be some of the most important developmental work we ever do. so this week, don't ask how to make your toddler focus longer. Pick one thing from everything we just talked about: sleep, screens, rhythm, and real participation, and protect it just for this week. Then step back long enough to see what your child can do. Because your child doesn't need a more entertaining childhood. They need one that gives their developing brain the time and space, relationships, and real experiences it needs to grow. And if you're sitting with all of this thinking, "Okay, but where do I even start?" That's exactly why I offer clarity calls, They're free, 20 minutes. We sort through where things actually stand right now and what your best next step might be. There's no pitch or pressure. I know you have questions, and I have some answers. The link is down below. next week, we're looking at seven innocent habits that might be quietly working against everything we just covered. So I can't wait to see you there, and God bless you and your beautiful family, and thanks for talking toddlers