time pains

I don't know exactly how much G understands about the concept of time as the Western world defines and values it, because he can't tell me, but from what I can glean, there are gaping holes.  I know he doesn't understand months, or years.  I don't think he understands weeks.  I do think he knows what a day is, but if I say yesterday or tomorrow it doesn't seem to click for him.  Anything past or future is most often out of reach in conversations.  We live in the here and now, even when we don't want to.  G does best with visual representations when he's learning and Time is pretty hard to show visually.  How do you draw a picture of "If we have time after going the grocery store and the bank then maybe we can make playdough volcanoes"?  We have calendars with pictures of activities, and he loves to look at clocks, but when I tell him we will make cookies in a little while, I don't know what he thinks I mean, or if he thinks I don't mean anything at all and am ignoring his request.  Maybe he thinks I just pick what we are doing or not doing at any moment without there being any rules imposed on me in my decision making.  Schooltime is not 12:40 p.m. but rather, whenever Mama decides it's time for school.  I wish the world fitted itself around me.  Then I could set my clock by my kids needs and desires.


We talk about days of the week and time but it's still our number one enemy right now.  It is hard to accept schedules, changes of plan, specific orders of events when you don't know why it is the way it is.  It's hard for G to live within the rules that most of us do.  He has tantrums because we have to do something he doesn't want to do before something he really wants to do and he can't understand why.  I wonder if he imagines the world is out to make him miserable, or that Mama makes every decision about everything like what days school is happening, when it is lunchtime, when we run out of his most beloved food: cheese, how long it takes to get home, whether or not it's sunny out, etc., etc.  That's just they way it is does not impress him.  In fact, it's an assemblage of words that means nothing to him as well as not explaining anything when we run into trouble.  Occasionally I catch myself wishing he could just take "Because that's the way it works" as an answer, but then I remember that I was never satisfied with that kind of adult speak as a kid either.  He wants to understand how everything works and doesn't, and that's a gift.  And I'd definitely miss his thorough examinations of why things are the way they are if he didn't care, even though they quite frequently drive both of us into a state of utter frustration.  


Now I'm off to the school playground to watch G play and then to convince him that time to go home is coming whether or not he wants it to.