By the time the disk has waned into a two-minute sliver, my kids’ innate competitiveness kicks in, and they’ll race to see who can beat the clock. When time’s up, the clock simply emits a few beeps I would classify as “pleasant,” although this feature can also be muted. Like nothing else, watching that red circle shrink into ever-smaller slices motivates my kids to finish before it’s gone. With the Time Timer, time is no longer just some abstraction that’s arbitrarily measured out by adults and robots, and safely ignored. But especially for kids who haven’t quite grasped numbers yet, that’s all just some confusing pantomime before grown-ups cruelly snatch their food away. We’d tried timers before, of course - our phones, Alexa, even an old analog egg timer. Time means nothing to them.Īfter months of breakfasts ending in frustration, yelling, and tears, we discovered the Time Timer, a 60-minute timer with a visible red disk that slowly disappears as time runs out. And, like all appeals to a 4-year-old’s sense of reason, it fails spectacularly. This is a logically sound argument, delivered calmly and without judgment. They’ll miss out on their morning playground time, while mom and dad will lose some of the few precious hours we have in which to work, exercise, and write passive-aggressive articles about them.
If anything throws off this timetable - like, say, taking 45 minutes to eat a bowl of Froot Loops - then we’ll be late. We’re currently in our second year of preschool, meaning we’ve spent hundreds of mornings discussing the importance of finishing breakfast on schedule, leaving us just enough time to pick out clothes, reject those clothes, debate whether they can just wear their Elsa costumes, demand an old pair of shoes we threw out last summer, grieve for a bit, say good-bye to all of their toys like they’re heading off to war, then, finally, get in the car.
I also need them to hurry up and finish their breakfast before I lose my goddamned mind. I admit, I need more of this in my own life (and I’ve spent countless hours with meditation apps trying vainly to achieve it). I envy their ability to stop and savor life at their own pace - to be totally within the moment, and to not let worry of the future cloud the joys of the present. My twin daughters, like most kids, have zero concept of time.
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