Whenever there was something momentous coming up in our family life our boys would harass us with the questions of when it was coming… When will Christmas be here? When are Grandma and Bop coming to visit? When do we leave for Denver? When is my birthday?
It’s difficult to explain time to a young child. I can remember answering their questions with a specific amount of time- “Grandma is coming in three months” only to have them ask “when is three months?” Finally, I stumbled across a way to describe time to them in a way that they could comprehend. “Before Grandma comes we will have Easter, then the leaves will come out on the trees. The rhodies will bloom in the front yard, and the leaves on the trees will get really big. Nathaniel will have his birthday and then Grandma will be here”. (That translates to Grandma is coming in late June.)
I call this a time map. I would actually draw these events out on a piece of paper and cross them off as a way to track time for my boys. If I choose to list events that would actually occur on specific days on the calendar I could place stickers on the correct squares and cross those off when they occurred. It didn’t necessarily eliminate the questions about when something was going to happen, but it did at least give me a way to talk to them about a concept that was so beyond their understanding.
I found this worked well for the day-to-day “when” questions, too. “When will Daddy be home?” First we have to have lunch, and then we’ll play outside in the rain. We’ll have a story and a nap. When you wake up we’ll have a snack and play inside. Then Daddy will be home.”
I found that when I described time for my children in this way, they were less stressed and anxious about the future. Not only did they know when Grandma was coming, but they knew when a whole bunch of other things were going to happen too, and in what order those events would happen. They could understand time based on the order those events would happen. And not only that, they were learning to sequence.
When they took Kindergarten readiness tests one of the activities was a series of cards that told a story- like making a garden. Each card showed one step in the sequence. The child was required to put the cards in the proper order – turn the soil, plant the seeds, water the seeds, weed the patch and pick the blooms.
My boys totally aced this test. They understood sequencing. Their whole lives had been sequenced by events they could see and understand in order to alleviate the endless questions that made me nuts. Who knew my solution to the fact that children can’t tell time or read a calendar would give them a leg up in the task of understanding how things work in our world?
-posted by Miss Allison, who reminds you that after all… There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1
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