Eli lumps time into two big buckets: now, and next week. Whenever we tell him, “Your friend Josh can’t come over right now,” he says, “Can he come over next week?” It’s kind of like how dogs live in the eternal now.
That’s right, I just compared my son to a dog. It’s just the kind of loving parent I am.
This makes talking to him about time interesting. On our most recent car trip, he launched into his cover of the popular kid’s song, “Are We There Yet?” “When will we be in Memphis,” he asked.
“We’re almost there. We’ll be there in 15 minutes.”
“How long does 15 minutes take?”
The only answer I hit on was, “It’s like thirty nows from now.”
Eventually he’ll get a better concept of time. With luck, we’ll then be able to teach him to stay in his room while we sleep in.
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Eli sounds like project managers at [unnamed American aerospace contractor]!
My mom used to measure all time for me in units of Sesame Streets. She says the day she officially knew parenting had fried her brain was when she called my dad to tell him we’d be home in two Sesame Streets.
Okay, that’s my new unit of time. I’ll have to see how well it goes over at work.
I plan on using it, too.
I thought the key to sleeping in was to tell Eli to come back at 7-0-0 or whatever time you wanted stated in numbers?? I’ve told him that before but it was at least a year ago.
When I was young I somehow had the impression that the school year was the same length as summer vacation, so I was spending on year in school, and then one year out of it, and so on.