Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think it's as much about attention span as it is about simple interest. They are interested = they pay attention, they are not interested = they couldn't care less. Honestly, how good is your attention span when it comes to things you have zero interest in? I'll be staring through the window and someone will have to kick me hard to let me know it's over! lol DS3 will spend zero minutes listening to me or anyone else read books to him. He sill spend hours reading by himself or browsing/reading/listening to ebooks on my Kindle. He has no interest in me reading to him because he can't manipulate me the way he does his own paper or electronic books. He's interested in pressing the more difficult words repeatedly so he knows how to read them. He's bored to death by just listening to a story. Reminds me of his Early Intervention evaluation. We have this set of Melissa & Doug stackable alphabet boxes/blocks and they wanted him to stack 3 and he wasn't looking at them at all, doing his own thing but I could see him just kind of side watching them and then he came and stacked the whole set of 10 or how many, alphabetically and turned each one 90 degrees. He was very proud of his work, yet he failed to do the challenge because he didn't copy the lady stacking the 3 blocks. He has no interest in copying anyone or anything and always does things differently. And it's what we love about him. No reason for us to try and change this about him at this point. Yes, he'll be the child not paying attention at school and in the end turning in homework with results only and no explanation of how he came to the final answers. Who cares. I'm not ready to raise a sheep that does nothing but follows and copies
