🎯 Attention & Focus Observation Checklist
Write down what you actually see over two weeks — at home, at school, at mealtimes — and bring the sheet with you. It is an observation record, not a test, and it makes the first appointment far more useful.
How to use it at home
- Print one sheet and keep it somewhere you pass often — the fridge, a kitchen drawer, your bag.
- Fill it in across about two weeks rather than in one sitting. Attention changes with tiredness, hunger and the time of day, and a single afternoon tells you very little.
- Tick what you genuinely see, not what you fear. “Not yet” is as useful to a clinician as “often”.
- Ask your child’s teacher to complete a second copy. Behaviour that shows up in only one setting points somewhere quite different from behaviour that shows up everywhere.
- Use the notes lines for the specifics — which lesson, which time of day, what had just happened. Examples are worth more than ticks.
- Bring both copies to your appointment. It saves a great deal of guesswork and helps us ask better questions.
A quick preview — here’s what you’ll print:
Tick what you see over about two weeks. This is an observation record to bring to an appointment — not a test, and there is no score.
| Staying with a task | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loses interest in a task before it is finished, even one they chose | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Moves between activities every few minutes | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Needs an adult beside them to keep going | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Can concentrate for a long time on something they love | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Avoids or refuses tasks that need sustained effort | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Listening and instructions | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seems not to listen when spoken to directly | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Follows the first step of an instruction but not the rest | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Needs instructions repeated several times | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Misses details and makes careless slips in familiar work | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Movement and impulse | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fidgets, taps or squirms when expected to sit | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Leaves their seat at times when sitting is expected | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Answers before the question is finished | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Finds waiting for a turn very hard | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Interrupts conversations or games | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Organising and remembering | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loses things needed for school or play | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Forgets everyday routines even after months of practice | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Is easily pulled off task by noise or movement nearby | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| The rest of the picture | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleeps poorly, or is hard to settle at night | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Seems worried, tearful or on edge | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Struggles to follow longer sentences or explanations | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Difficulty shows at school as well as at home | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
- Print one sheet and keep it somewhere you pass often — the fridge, a kitchen drawer, your bag.
- Fill it in across about two weeks rather than in one sitting. Attention changes with tiredness, hunger and the time of day, and a single afternoon tells you very little.
- Tick what you genuinely see, not what you fear. “Not yet” is as useful to a clinician as “often”.
- Ask your child’s teacher to complete a second copy. Behaviour that shows up in only one setting points somewhere quite different from behaviour that shows up everywhere.
- Use the notes lines for the specifics — which lesson, which time of day, what had just happened. Examples are worth more than ticks.
- Bring both copies to your appointment. It saves a great deal of guesswork and helps us ask better questions.
Pairs with our free attention & focus home program at inclusivetherapycentre.com/home-programs
Why this helps
Almost every parent who comes to us worried about attention says a version of the same sentence: “he just cannot sit still.” It is a completely reasonable thing to say, and it is also very hard for a clinician to act on. What helps is detail — whether the difficulty shows up at home and at school or only in one, whether it is worse in a noisy room, whether it disappears entirely when your child is doing something they love. That last one surprises parents, because a child who cannot sit through homework but will build with blocks for an hour is not a contradiction. It is information, and it belongs on the sheet.
Writing things down over two weeks also protects you from the trap of the bad day. Attention wobbles with sleep, hunger, screen time and stress, so one difficult afternoon can convince a worried parent of something a fortnight of notes would not support. Filling this in slowly is a way of checking your own impression against what is really happening — and quite often it reassures rather than alarms. If you would like the wider picture first, our page on ADHD in children explains what attention difficulties actually look like at different ages, and ADHD or ordinary toddler energy? is the honest version of the question most parents are really asking.
One thing this sheet is not: a diagnosis. It is not a scored test and there is no number at the bottom that means anything. When a professional assesses attention they use validated, standardised questionnaires — you may hear names like the Conners rating scales or the SNAP-IV — completed by parents and teachers alongside an interview, developmental history and observation. Those tools are scored against large comparison groups; a printable sheet is not, and anyone who tells you otherwise is overselling. What this record does is make that proper assessment quicker and better informed. It is the raw material, not the verdict.
Please also keep in mind how many ordinary things imitate an attention difficulty in a young child. Poor sleep does it. Hearing loss does it, because a child who catches only half of what is said drifts off. Anxiety does it. So does a language difficulty — a child who cannot follow a three-part instruction may look inattentive when the real problem is that the instruction never fully landed. This is exactly why we start with a broad developmental assessment rather than jumping to a label, and why the hearing question comes up early.
When you are ready to work on attention rather than measure it, the practical companion to this sheet is our free attention and focus home program, and there are ready-made activities in activities that build attention. Parents often find a first-then board does more for daily co-operation than any amount of reminding, because it makes the deal visible instead of verbal.
Tips for using it well
- Do fill this in over two weeks — attention on one tired Tuesday is not a pattern.
- Don’t score it or add the ticks up. There is no cut-off here, and treating it like a test invites a conclusion the sheet cannot support.
- Do get a teacher copy if your child is at school. Difficulty in one setting only is genuinely different from difficulty everywhere, and it changes what a clinician looks at first.
- Do note what your child can concentrate on, and for how long. Sustained attention on a favourite activity is meaningful and often gets left out.
- Don’t complete it in front of your child, and don’t read the statements out to them. It is a note to a professional, not a report card.
- Do write down sleep. A child who is not sleeping enough will look inattentive whatever else is going on, and it is one of the first things worth fixing.
- Do pair it with a daily routine chart if mornings and homework are the flashpoints — a lot of “won’t focus” turns out to be “doesn’t know what comes next”.
Common questions
Does this checklist tell me whether my child has ADHD?
No, and please do not read it that way. There is no score and no cut-off. ADHD is identified through a proper assessment that combines a developmental history, standardised parent and teacher rating scales, observation, and ruling out the other things that look similar — hearing difficulties, sleep problems, anxiety and language difficulties among them. What this sheet gives you is an accurate, unhurried record of what you actually see, which makes that assessment faster and better informed. Bring it to a developmental assessment and let a clinician interpret it.
My child concentrates for hours on a tablet but not on homework. Does that rule out an attention difficulty?
It does not. Screens and favourite activities give constant, immediate feedback, and many children who struggle badly with slower or less rewarding tasks can lock on to them for a long time. Clinicians expect this pattern rather than being puzzled by it, so please do write it down — including what your child sustains attention on and for how long. What it does tell you is that the ability to concentrate exists; the difficulty is with the effortful, low-reward tasks. On the screen question itself, healthy screen-time habits covers what actually helps at home.
How old does my child need to be for this to be worth filling in?
It is written for roughly four years and up. Below that, a short attention span is normal rather than notable — a two-year-old is supposed to flit. If your child is younger and you are worried, our milestone checklists by age are a better starting point, because they compare what you are seeing against ordinary development for that age rather than against attention specifically.
The school says he is fine but at home he cannot settle at all. What does that mean?
It is a genuinely useful finding, which is why the teacher copy matters. Difficulties that appear in only one setting often point to something about that setting — the demands, the routine, the noise, tiredness at the end of a long day — rather than to a condition that would follow a child everywhere. It can also mean a child is holding himself together all day at school and letting go at home, which is exhausting and worth taking seriously in its own right. Write down both pictures and let the assessment make sense of the difference.
What happens after I bring this in?
We read it before we do anything else, because it is a fortnight of your observation and we cannot get that in a first appointment. From there we talk through the history, check hearing and language are not sitting underneath the attention difficulty, and agree what is worth assessing formally. Some families leave with practical changes and no diagnosis at all, and that is a perfectly good outcome. You can book an appointment with our team or message us on +92 314 6040262.
Written by the Inclusive Developmental and Therapy Center therapy team — our Speech & Language Therapist, psychology and ABA staff. This page is awaiting its clinical review.
Want help using these with your child?
A short, friendly conversation is the best first step. Call, text or WhatsApp us — we’ll listen and guide you, with no pressure.
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