Lessons from a two-year-old

I was babysitting my small grandson the other day. He isn’t yet two, but he has “graduated” from the ‘baby” toys he used to play with and loves to play with the matchbox cars that used to belong to my son.

On this particular occasion, he spent two and a half hours playing without a break. I would have been bored, but he methodically put each small car on the circular shoot and watched it zoom down. As you can see from the picture, that’s a lot of cars! Then he did it again. And again… Finally, he picked up each and every car and put it back in the bucket – his signal that he was ready for something else. (He can’t talk yet, but I managed to surmise that he wanted a snack.)

After our snack and a diaper change, he went back to the cars for another hour and a half until his mother came and got him. I don’t know many two-year-olds who have that kind of attention span. It surpasses most adults I’ve met!

It made me think about attention span in general – or lack thereof. In today’s culture, everything needs to be faster, shorter, attention-grabbing, and so on. As an author, I’ve been told that people want shorter books because the average reader’s attention span isn’t what it used to be. Social media posts need to be short and pithy or people won’t bother to stop and read. TikTok is the king in this regard. If you can’t grab someone’s attention in the first second you’ve failed.

Sometimes it feels like a whirlwind and nobody is stopping to catch their breath. My grandson hasn’t yet been trained to need ever-changing amusement. He was content to do the same thing over and over and got a lot of pleasure out of it. It made me think of my own habits and how they have changed since social media and the online world have become such an integral part of my life.

Perhaps we all need to become a bit more intentional about turning off the constant bombardment and just focus on something mundane – albeit enjoyable – that has nothing to do with technology. It’s just a thought.