Why Children Perceive Time Slowly: Unraveling the Mystery

Time is an abstract concept that is omnipresent in life. However, when one discusses how children understand time, one finds a treasure trove yet to be opened. Knowing time from a child's point of view could be the future of a happy human life.

Household Debates on Time:

It also brings debate when in my home, one person will claim that time goes very fast or very slow in one's home.

"Slowest in the car," my son argues, while my daughter retorts, "Never! I am so busy that time cannot go slow, but maybe it can on weekends when we are sitting on the couch watching movies."

 In fact, despite this difference, they agree on one thing: the days following major holidays like Christmas or birthdays drag on forever as reality sets in that there are 365 more days until the next celebration. At this age, years feel like they take an eternity to pass.

I feel the same. The long summer days spent playing in the yard are vivid in my mind. Sun shining bright with the laundry swinging in the line; time felt like it was crawling on its belly.

The Study of Children and Time:

Teresa McCormack is a professor of psychology at Queen's University Belfast and stresses that time perception in children is still a pretty under-researched area. Her work attempts to answer if children's inner clocks are any different from those of adults. An important question she asks is when children become aware of the fact that time is something continuous and linear. It is curious that we still do not have a clear answer to this, given how crucial our sense of time is in structuring our adult lives.

McCormack explains that although young children don’t have a full grasp of linear time, they are sensitive to routines—such as when it's time to eat or go to bed. This routine-based sense of time is very different from an adult’s understanding of time, which is influenced by our knowledge of calendars and clocks.

Temporal Language and Understanding:

One of the most essential steps in a child's awareness of time is their capacity to utilize temporal vocabulary, such as "before," "after," "yesterday," and "tomorrow." McCormack points out that children take some time to master these concepts and that their ability to understand and express time is developed gradually.

The experience of time also varies as a function of when people are asked to render judgments. McCormack observes, for instance, that the passage of time during the experience may be different in quality than reflection on it over time. While the years until a child graduates from college often seem to elapse with remarkable rapidity to parents, their daily experience of child-rearing often seems long and interminable.

How Children Experience Time:

This has been proven that little children judge time duration related to their psychological states rather than actual time spent. For example, children at six years old can report that one lesson in school took too long and the other too short. Of course, all of these are long before children correlate emotional events to the objective passage of time.

The Role of Memory in Time Perception:

Memory also plays a central role in how we experience time. Zoltán Nádasdy, a psychology professor at Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University, has spent decades researching the connection between memory and time perception. In a 1987 investigation, he showed a group of children and adults two one-minute videos, one action-packed and the other slow-paced, and asked which one felt the longest. Children generally said they felt that the action-packed video was longer than it was, while adults experienced the reverse effect. The lesson of this study is how easily perceptions of time are manipulated based on what we are exposed to.

According to his work, humans rely on "heuristics" or approximations to judge time. For example, children perhaps use how much discussion is generated about an activity or how enjoyable it is to estimate how long it went on.

The Transition to School and Structured Time:

When children start school, a great deal changes. Learning about the clock and the schedule-driven environment of school life gives them a more structured sense of time. According to McCormack, this shift may replace earlier "heuristics" with a more rigid understanding of time.

Emotional States and Their Impact on Time:

Emotion, too, impacts time perception, and it was found by Sylvie Droit-Volet and John Wearden that time elapses faster if one is feeling happy and much slower if the person is feeling sad. Even in stress, this can be the long lockdowns that everyone experienced for months seemed like they lasted forever because people were isolated from their loved ones, had few activities to look forward to, and were mentally strained.

Age and Time Perception:

Other factors may also come into play as we age. For instance, Adrian Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University, has discussed how the physical structure of the brain impacts time perception. According to Bejan, the processing of sensory information in the brain slows down with age, which might explain why adults perceive time as passing more quickly than children.

Our brain receives "snapshots" of the world around us, and as we grow older, the distance and complexity of the pathways from our eyes to our brain increase. This may contribute to the sensation of compressed time as we age.

Routine and Time Pressure:

The second factor that determines the way we experience time is the routine nature of our lives. Studies have demonstrated that, as a person ages, his or her routine becomes more calculated and less flexible. Consequently, time appears to pass much more quickly. The more time stress, boredom, and routine characterize the life of a person, the faster they feel it is passing.

New Experiences Can Slow Time Down:

Interestingly, doing something new, which would help break the routine, tends to stretch out time. McCormack as well as Bejan highlights how fresh chances can also result in the slowing down of the flow of time. One must try new activities, be more spontaneous, and appreciate surprises to feel time stretching out, much like how children experience the world with fresh eyes.

Slowing Down Time:

Time perception is not fixed but changes as we age, change our emotional state and encounter new experiences. For adults, the revival of those languid summer days may not be as easy as waiting for a long weekend. However, being engaged in new experiences, keeping active, and embracing routines that bring joy to our lives will help slow down the clock and relieve some of that childhood wonder.