Dear Dr. Debbie,
We had a scare one recent morning, discovering our four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son were not in their beds. Nor were they anywhere in the house, Nor the yard. My husband and I set off – one by car and one on foot – and found the children happily on their way to the nearby playground, the older one pulling the younger one in the wagon.
My daughter explained, “You said we could go to the playground some day and when I woke up it was some day! So that’s where we’re going.”
What Will They Do Next?
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Dear W.W.T.D.N.,
I expect they’ll keep surprising you with their childlike logic.
This is a good example of the trust a child can have of her parent’s words. As long as you follow through with your promises, she trusts that you have a lot of knowledge and control regarding how her world works.
Concrete Thinking
At age four, a child may understand that days have names and that one of these names sounds something like Some Day. She doesn’t yet have a fixed concept of the repeating cycle of seven names. To her, the order is random, or perhaps based on an adult’s whim. When Dad says, “It’s Saturday, let’s go to the zoo!” she is in awe of his wisdom and his benevolence.
When Mom says, “You’ll go to the playground Some Day,” she takes that as assurance that a trip to the playground is going to happen.
Magical Thinking
There’s a fascinating ability in young children, up to about age eight, that enables them to make up their own rules of logic in order to justify their actions. This is most likely to happen when there is no adult around. For example, a little girl was making clothes for one of her dolls and decided the fabric in a dress of her own, hanging in the closet, was just what she needed. She thought, “If I cut it quickly it will be okay.”
This is how “Some Day” becomes now.
Living in the Moment
Waiting for a few days for something she wants, or a few hours, or even a few minutes, is not to be expected of a young child. You may have noticed the difference in patience between your two-year-old and your four-year-old. While your two-year-old might pitch a fit because you’re not opening the box of crackers fast enough, your four-year-old can look at a book by herself as you get little brother into his pajamas. She knows that you’re coming to read to her when he’s all dressed – before she gets to the end of the book in her hands. This wait is tolerable. She’s been down this road before and has committed the routine to memory.
Her moment-to-moment, albeit narrow, thinking on the morning of the wagon trip led her to believe that all conditions were perfect. I’m up. The sun is shining. Little brother is up. I can pull him in the wagon. Perfect time to go to the playground!
Listen
Children are extremely motivated to do what they want to do. The day before a field trip a kindergartner told his teacher that he didn’t want to go. This was in the days before cell phones. So when the drama unfolded – and the teacher frantically called the school office when they arrived at the field trip destination, and the missing child was located by the school secretary, calmly looking at books from his hiding place in his classroom, the teacher responsibly called the mother to apologize and reassure her that her son was fine. The mother shared that he had also told her it was going to be a “dumb field trip’ and that he didn’t want to go.
It is important to listen to what a child says.
Follow Through vs. Empty Promises
Successful communication includes accurate reception. Sometimes it’s hard to pay attention to how a child might be taking in your words and actions. Especially so when you are trying to say, “No” to her but also trying to avoid drama. A quick, “Yes, we can do that later” or “It’s going to be a fun field trip” may prevent an argument, but commits you to a promise. Keeping a promise to a child builds trust. Eventually, she will trust that your “No” is always in her best interest because she’s learned to expect that you come through on all your “Yesses”. Maybe the Mom of the field trip dodger could have done more to make it appealing, eliciting his motivation to go with his class.
The best part of your adventurer’s thinking is that “Mommy said we could go to the playground.”
And she believes in a promise from Mommy.
Dr. Debbie
Deborah Wood, Ph.D. is a child development specialist and founding director of Chesapeake Children’s Museum.
The museum is open daily from 10 am to 4 pm. Online reservations are available or call: 410-990-1993. Each Thursday there is a guided nature walk at 10:30 am. Art and Story Times with Mrs. Spears are on Monday mornings at 10:30 am.
Read more of Dr. Wood’s Good Parenting columns by clicking here.