It's About Time A child’s sense of time is very different from
that of an adult. An hour, a day and a week are concrete
concepts to adults but unfathomable abstracts to young children.
Children, especially pre-clock-readers, exist in the present.
They are not as comforted by the thought that a dental
appointment will last only a half hour. Adults can think beyond
the dentist, beyond the half hour, to what comes next. Children
are lost in the stress of a dental appointment as they are in
the joy of a computer game. Time is unrelated to the activity.
Even after learning to tell time, ten minutes can feel much
longer to a child than it is. Ten minutes waiting for a bus
seems much longer than ten minutes playing ball. The same holds
true for adults, but adults know that there is often a
difference in how long time feels like it is passing and how
long it actually does pass. To a child, who operates strictly by
feel, this makes no sense. How to Make Time 'Real' Before
children understand time in minutes and hours,