How to cultivate children\’s sense of time? This is the best answer I\’ve ever seen

My best friend’s daughter is 4 years old, smart and lovable. I was chatting a few days ago, and my best friend was worried about her daughter. \”Every night I start asking her to take a bath at 8 o\’clock, and it takes half an hour to put away the toys. Sometimes she is still awake after ten o\’clock. She can\’t get up in the morning, and she takes a long time to wash herself. She is always late for kindergarten.\” \”She has no sense of time. What will I do after I go to school?\” My best friend was a little anxious. Image source: \”Little Shoes\” Her worries are not groundless. There are 51 students in my class, most of whom are around 10 years old this year. More than a dozen of the children have no sense of time. Their style of painting is like this: the whole class is seated, the teacher is about to start a lecture, Xiaojun stands up leisurely: Xiaojun: \”Teacher… I want to go to the toilet/get water.\” Teacher. : \”Why didn\’t you go after class?\” Xiaojun: \”I went to play, but I didn\’t have time.\” In addition to not having time to go to the toilet or get water, children like Xiaojun often have no time to eat breakfast, complete homework, and participate in activities… Even if If the task is completed in a hurry, the quality will be greatly compromised. As children grow older, the impact and harm of not having a sense of time will be greater. The world-famous pop queen Madonna has a nickname – \”The Late Queen\”. When she held a concert in Manchester, England, she showed up 50 minutes late. As soon as she took the stage, she was booed by all the audience, and some fans left early. There was also controversy on social networks. Many netizens thought that he was not good enough. Respect the fans and have no professionalism. At her previous Taipei Arena concert, Madonna was more than two hours late, causing the concert to officially start after 10 p.m. In life, although the consequences of being late for work may not be so serious, it is still a taboo in the workplace and in interpersonal relationships. Without a sense of time, you may leave an impression of being irresponsible and unreliable, and miss many important opportunities in life. Therefore, it is especially important to help children establish a good sense of time during their early years. It is really difficult for children to perceive time. \”An inch of time is worth an inch of gold, and an inch of time cannot buy an inch of time.\” \”Tomorrow comes tomorrow, and there are so many tomorrows.\” Many children know these famous aphorisms by heart, but they still procrastinate in doing things, which makes My mother, who had finally practiced \”becoming a Buddha\”, succeeded in one second, and turned into a mobile timer to keep urging her. In fact, it is not that children have no concept of time, but that time is too abstract for children to understand at all. Cognitive psychology believes that each person\’s concept of time is closely related to his or her own time perception. The so-called time perception is people’s intuitive reaction to the sequence (time sequence) and persistence (time distance) of things happening. Such intuitive reactions do not exist innately, but develop with the accumulation of children\’s life experiences. Most children\’s time perception does not begin to sprout until they are around 3 years old. Therefore, in order to cultivate children\’s sense of time, we must first give them time so that they can distinguish the order of time and control the distance of time. How long is 10 minutes? The child really doesn’t know that 5-year-old Yangyang and her mother have been a little troubled recently. Sunday is his uncle\’s birthday, and Yangyang is going to an institution to take English lessons. get out of class ends at 5 o\’clock. He and his mother agreed to meet in the parking lot downstairs at 5:30, but they didn\’t arrive until 6:00. When her mother asked, she found that Yangyang had been playing backgammon with her classmates.He immediately scolded him for being playful and unpunctual. Yangyang felt a little aggrieved: \”It\’s wrong to be late, but I\’m not playful. I really didn\’t know half an hour went by so fast.\” After hearing the child\’s excuse, the mother became even more angry: \”It\’s obvious that he was just playful, but he still made excuses!\” Mother and son The war is about to break out. This scene may be familiar to every mother. In the children\’s play area of ​​the park, the children who promised to play for ten more minutes were holding on to the swings until the time came. When the appointed time comes, although the child responds to your reminder, he has no intention of putting down the toy. There are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour. But how long is an hour, and how much can we do in 10 minutes? Many children really have no idea. Sometimes, a child\’s procrastination behavior does not mean that he is playful, but that he really cannot accurately estimate the length of time. Psychologists once divided children aged 6-14 into groups to conduct duration estimation experiments. The results showed that children aged 6-7 were inaccurate, changeable and unstable in their estimation of short periods of time; children aged 8-14 were not accurate enough in their estimation of short periods of time; The estimate is relatively accurate, and the concept of time has gradually stabilized. However, estimating long-term distances of more than half an hour is difficult for adults to do due to factors such as emotions and tasks, let alone children whose time perception is in the early stages of development. The timer can make difficult-to-estimate time distances controllable, and can soundly remind children at the end of the time period. It is the first step to cultivate children to develop a good concept of time. Whether it is painting and playing with toys, or doing homework and reading picture books, before each activity starts, we can make an appointment with the child for the duration of the activity, set the timer and tell the child that when the timer sounds, we will stop. Things that are being done because the time has come. If the child is already able to read a clock, we can use an alarm clock instead of a timer. The changes in the hands and scales can also visually stimulate the child. What needs special attention is that within the agreed time period, we must control our nagging mouths and eager hearts, so that our children can become the real managers of this time period. This approach can reduce procrastination and help children learn to abide by agreements. Chronological order? Silly, I couldn\’t tell how Qiqi, a little boy in second grade, did his homework like this: he wrote for two minutes, picked up the eraser and played with it for five minutes; after his mother reminded him, he put down the eraser and wrote three lines, went out to use the toilet, and wrote again Five minutes later, I picked up the plate and started eating the fruit. I went to the living room to look at the goldfish. Ten minutes passed. I finally finished my Chinese homework, took out my math sketchbook, and drew Plants vs. Zombies… The amount of homework in half an hour was two hours to complete. Faced with such a scene, many mothers will be unable to control the ancient power in their bodies, lamenting that doing homework with their children is a practice without an end. Children like Qiqi do things in a disorganized manner and have no sense of time order. Many things in life and study are in a state of chaos, and their efficiency is naturally not high. How to do it? Letting children record what they do throughout the day is an effective way to establish a sense of time order, and is also the second way to cultivate children\’s sense of time. Children\’s daily life is not complicated, and the things they do every day are relatively fixed. By recording and observing, they can discover patterns in events over the same period of time, and execute the new day\’s procedures in this order, so as to develop a good habit of doing things in an organized manner, establish a good sense of time sequence, and complete tasks efficiently. This is a day recorded by Qiqi himself: If a child doesn’t like or can’t write, drawing and recording is a good choice. Things don’t need to be recorded in such detail. Simply distinguish between morning, noon, afternoon and evening time periods. Children two years old or younger have a simpler and more regular life, and are more suitable for the picture list method. The list only needs to list a few necessary procedures for them to get up early or before going to bed. After each item is completed, ask the children to check off the corresponding pictures on the list. The morning list: dressing, brushing teeth, washing face, and eating is full of fun. In addition to allowing children to feel the connection between time changes in the day and events in their own lives, it can also help children adapt to a regular schedule from an early age. When children enter elementary school, they can also use daily records to formulate their own daily or weekly plans and proactively manage time. Gorky said: The fastest and slowest, the longest and shortest, the most ordinary and precious, the most easily overlooked, and the most regrettable thing in the world is time. When children are still in their infancy, parents are their time managers, carefully arranging every minute and second for them. When children leave our arms, parents become overseers of their time. Being late and procrastinating makes us anxious and worried, and we wish we could be with them all the time. We forget that when parents and children finally part, the children will embark on a journey of time that belongs only to them. We can only accompany our children for one journey, but cannot participate in their entire lives. What we can do is teach our children to take control of every minute and second in their lives that is most easily lost and cannot be copied.