Attention Architect
Attention Health

Attention is built in six steps. Not one big talent.

Your child already has some of them. One is usually missing — and that one is why the evenings are hard.

Four evenings

You have already seen the evidence. Here is what it was telling you.

What you see is on the left. What was actually happening is on the right.

What it looks like

Ten genuinely good minutes — you can see them thinking. Then a question about something unrelated. Twenty minutes on, the page has not moved.

You conclude: they cannot concentrate.

What is actually happening

Attention was being held by difficulty. At minute ten the problem stopped being difficult, and attention let go — doing exactly what it is built to do. Nothing failed. The task ran out of grip.

The step: Holding on
The six steps

They arrive roughly in this order.

A child can be strong at the fourth and have never built the first — which is why “she can’t concentrate” tells you nothing.

1. Starting
Getting from "I should" to actually begun, without a push from outside.
2. Holding on
Staying with a task once it stops being interesting or hard enough to hold them.
3. Staying with it
Continuing across a whole session, not just the first good ten minutes.
4. Recovering
Coming back after an interruption — a separate skill from never being interrupted.
5. Carrying it over
Using the same attention in a new place: a different subject, a different room.
6. Running it themselves
Noticing their own drift and doing something about it without being told.
The 8 kinds of children →The 4 kinds of parents →
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See where your child stands on all six.

Five minutes of questions about what you already notice. The profile is free and yours to keep.