Children have a hard time understanding things they can’t see and touch. Time is particularly tricky. Concepts like sequences of events (first A then B), causality (A causes B), the length of any particular unit of time (a minute, a day) are apparently quite abstract.

Children don’t seem to understand the word “then” until they’re about three. For instance, the phrase “first eat your peas and then you can have ice cream” cannot (or will not) be assimilated by small children. Toddlers have no idea how long five minutes is or how distant the weekend. When you tell a child you’ll do something tomorrow, they’re likely to think you mean either one instant from now or never.

Which is why I was so amused during our recent drive up the coast to Sacramento. The trip is eight hours with children and two stops for lunch and bathroom breaks. And at about the halfway point, when the girl became bored because her brother had passed out, she started asking, “Are we there yet?”

Just that she asked at all is amusing to me on a number of levels. It is such a cliche, such a tired joke on family sitcoms, and yet she couldn’t have been more sincere. But the thing that really amazed me was that she asked every eight minutes. Like clockwork, she’d ask and I’d note the time. 8:28, 8:36, 8:44. Then a break because the lovely and talented wife asked her to please stop asking. Then at 9:06. And again at 9:14! Amazing!

Daughter (9:06): "Are we there yet?"
Wife: "No."
Daughter (9:14): "Are we there yet?"
Wife: "No. You just asked that."
Daughter: "But that was forever ago!"

She is just beginning to understand that it takes about one minute to count to 60. She knows that lunch comes after breakfast. She can read a digital clock but doesn’t know what the numbers mean. And she has some kind of crazy internal chronometer that tells her that forever comes every eight minutes!