Forgetting Time

Spending a lot more time with my 2yr old has given me some perspective on many things, but most of all on time. He doesn't get it. It's not something that he wants to get. It's really something that we all shouldn't get, or be less conscious of somehow.

I remember a friend once had a shirt he would wear that read, "time is a human construct". That always stuck with me. Mostly because I have a stupid fascination with time traveling and really anything that disturbs our collective status quo on what time is and how we perceive it. But before I get all Carl Sagan on this shit let's talk about 2yr olds.

I am fascinated with my 2yr olds cognizance of time. His perception of it is intrinsic to his routine. Well, we are by nature our routines. There's an old Tibetan chant that goes (paraphrasing here):

Perception is his case is an incredibly important tools, really the only tool he has. He doesn't yet understand numbers; he chants his counting, sometimes skipping numbers or just making ones up intermittently. The symbol of the number is beyond his computation still too.

What he does understand is his routine and the sing-songy ness of it all. He knows on Mondays that his nanny comes. He knows on Tuesdays that the garbage trucks come. He knows that I, Dad, am home on the weekends.

But beyond that he understands the nuances of a day; the details of an hours even. He knows that in the morning he eats fruit on the counter, then has breakfast in his high-chair. He then ask for the iPad and watches his allotment of TV for the day. About an hour because we are those tech job parents that are desperately afraid of exposing our children to the world we get paid to construct.

After his TV time, we eat a bigger breakfast. Then we get ready to go outside. Which he usually scurries the house screaming "OUTSIDE!!" and pointing at the door until we have his socks his shoes his snacks his agua his dump truck his fire truck and countless other parts directed by his 2yr old rider. As if we aren't parents but instead personal assistants.

His morning officially starts and ends rather quickly. We go to a park or the beach, sometimes his grandparents take him to the bus stop where he greets and celebrates every interesting truck, bus, car, or airplane cruising west Los Angeles' Lincoln Boulevard. Then we come home, eat lunch, and play on the living room rug. A little reading and it's off to nap.

Later in the afternoon he rises, it's about 50/50 on his mood. Sometimes he's smiley go-lucky, others he's introspective and soberly conscious of every little things faults. Either way, he's up and wanting a snack. Something different from yesterday are his only criteria.

The afternoon consist of a walk and sometimes a movie. Mostly home-base activities. For example today we put up the Christmas tree and yesterday we put new hardware on one of our skateboards. If we are going out to dinner we go out super early as his dinner is when most adults get off of work. This is the extracurricular time in his routine.

Dinner is what you expect. Then there's bath time which involves singing Bingo Name-O, his version of B-I-N-G-O. You can probably guess how it goes from it's "name-o". A little birthday suit time followed by reading and bed.

What I have gathered from my limited experience as a parent of a 2yr old is that his perception isn't of just of the day, but of all its events. The events cascade like sprites in a way, if one goes fast, the others go fast. If breakfast is fussy, then garbage truck hunting is fussy. And as human as the rest of us he reacts to things dependent on his mood more than a mere circumstance.

His routines are turning into rituals— at only 2 years old! As a parent I now know he likes fruit first thing in the morning. Hopefully that will continue as breakfast they say is the most important meal. Also his routine helps him understand the limitation of screen time now as well. Although he never likes for it to stop, if we let it go too long he will on his own, walk away.