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bluefish

understanding time

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Hi ds broke up last Thursday from nursery and will start reception in September. My problem is he is very confussed now his routine of nursery has been broken.I have been preparing him for some time about the holidays(but bless him thinks this means centre parcs as that is where he has been, so ALL holidays equal centre parcs and he will not be persuaded otherwise!)I have explained it is school holidays and he will go back in september.Every morning and several times a day he askes"is it school now" I explain not till september "he asks "is it september now?"I have shown him on calender how long till september and we cross the days of but today he just crossed off last day off holidays and said "lets go its time now" he does not understand time in any way and even with day to day things I try to explain it will be time when big hand gets to here ect on clock, he simply climbs up and changes clock and shouts "it's time!" I use a visual timetable with him but in these sort of situations he still seems to not understand.

any advice???????

tomorrow morning he will again be trying to don his uniform for school before 5am!!!

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Hiya

 

Sorry I can't help but I would be interested to hear anyones suggestions - my son is a year younger and has no concept of time at all either - he doesn't even know morning / evening etc and I have the same problem with the "holiday" issue too LOL, he asks several times is it time for pre-school now?

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hi when my son was younger around6/7 years he always thought that school holidays ment that the school was going away some where. He was really shocked when one day durring the holidays we passed the school, and it was still there. He thought that it ment the holidays were over and he had to go back to school the next day. Of course he still had a few weeks to go and found that really hard to understand. I laughed to myself when i reaf your commenta. you may not find it funny now, but im sure in the future you will be able to look back and have a good laugh at this situation.

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I always used to count days in 'sleeps' (OK, I still do ... :wacko:). Could you modify your visual calendars etc. to see if counting in sleeps works ... I know it sounds stupid, but it could work :lol:

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Thanks I will try the sleeps thing! at Easter I made the mistake of telling ds school had "broken up" it took several visits to the school to prove it was still in tact and not broken after all :lol: its amazing how many times I let slip a comment that ds will take in a literal way!

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I would put the calendar away and just say that you will let him know when he is going to school the night before he goes back and then say you aren't discussing it again and ignore it. I had to do this sort of thing with DS because it would become a real obsession otherwise.

 

But to reasure you, most children of 4 don't understand time, days, weeks, etc. They live for the day and at a push can distinguish between yesterday and tomorrow and thats about it.

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My DS is 6 and a half and still has trouble with this.

He will get up and it will be lunch time on the weekend and he will ask me if its a school day today.

I try to explain to him no, when DH is home its the weekend, but on the days DH goes to work its a school day. I find that helps somewhat, but not always. DS will go oh yeah thats right and its as if he has forgotten altogether. One of those things you have to go through every weekend with him & well im afraid to say I dont have any real solution for school holidays either. We use counting sleeps for lots of things here too, birthdays christmas, weekends, days left of school and school holidays. We find with DS1's obsession with numbers this works the best. So we tell him there are x amount of sleeps left until school holidays are over. This didnt work too well when he couldnt count past 10 though, but now its routine enough.

 

You just have to keep trying new things til you find something that works for him and as much as its drives you crazy to go through it everyday, thats the way our little ones minds work I guess.

 

Hope you find a way that works soon!

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I always used to count days in 'sleeps' (OK, I still do ... :wacko:). Could you modify your visual calendars etc. to see if counting in sleeps works ... I know it sounds stupid, but it could work :lol:

 

I used to count my days in sleeps before as well Mumble. This was ultimately flawed though when I suffered badly from insomnia and didn't sleep for about 3 days so I only counted it as one :whistle:

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Hello,

 

Both my children understood the concept of so many sleeps. My seven year old (NT) still prefers this way of referring to time over weeks and months. On a related subject H (9) has just learnt to tell the time. All of a sudden he can read clocks to tell me exactly how many minutes past the hour and to the hour it is; he can use the 24 hour clock system; he can use digital and analogue clocks and he can work out exactly how long it is from one point of reference to another. Just a few months ago he had absolutley no concept of time and no interest in clock time at all. Sometimes things just 'click'.

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On a related subject H (9) has just learnt to tell the time. All of a sudden he can read clocks to tell me exactly how many minutes past the hour and to the hour it is; he can use the 24 hour clock system; he can use digital and analogue clocks and he can work out exactly how long it is from one point of reference to another. Just a few months ago he had absolutley no concept of time and no interest in clock time at all. Sometimes things just 'click'.

*nods* :)

 

If I could remove anything from the school mathematics curriculum it would be time. This really is something that comes with experience, when the child's ready for it, when they have an awareness of the 'existence' of time, and when they have a need for it. Trying to teach it to all children without taking this into account is futile and leads parents to worry if their child hasn't 'got it'.

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My lad cant grasp time at all and all he does know is a minute has 60seconds so if ive said give me 5 he counts 5 lots of 60's then expects me to do whatever it was on the dot.

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My dd 7 still doesnt have clue she breaks up tomorrow and already repeating when do i start juniors i just say 50 days but she gets very deep about it as she is just confused about days, weeks, months etc..

I try and occupy her mind with planning of the next day like tomorrow we going to do this etc..

i will also write the exact amount of days and get her to cross them off each day.

 

My youngest whos 4 god knows i think my pain will be when she starts back getting her back into school uniform, i know she going to have majoy behavioural problems she far worse than her sister for routines.

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