Attention spans for math and stories

Editor&rsquo;s note: This essay was originally published in 2019. I have made minor edits in this republishing. There was a MathOverflow thread about mathematically interesting games for 5–6 year olds. A lot of the discussion revolved around how young age 5 really is, and how we should temper expectations because we don&rsquo;t really remember what it&rsquo;s like to be 5. In response to an…