Children have a limited 'working memory' capacity, meaning they can only hold a few pieces of information at once.

Working memory is like a mental scratchpad where we temporarily store information we need right now, like a phone number we're about to dial or a list of instructions. For adults, this scratchpad can usually hold about 5 to 9 things at a time. For children, especially younger ones, it's much smaller – often only 2 to 4 things. This means if you give your child a list of three or four things to do ('Brush your teeth, put on your pajamas, find your favorite book, and then come for a hug!'), they might only remember the first one or two, or get them mixed up. It's not that they're not listening, but their brain literally doesn't have enough 'space' to hold all that information at once.