Q. When my son comes home from school, he gets plugged into the computer playing games or watching TV. His school says that he can’t pay attention in class and I don’t understand why if he can pay attention at home and not at school.
A. There is evidence that the longer children, particularly boys, watch TV the shorter their attention span becomes in other areas. What boys need when they come home from school is about two hours of hard play outside. Even if they don’t run around, boys need to develop sustained activities such as building forts if space is available or building with plastic blocks if they have to stay inside. All children need to spend time outside, but boys especially need unstructured time to learn to develop sustained attention