When children dawdle: why time ticks differently for them
“I'm coming in a minute” – and ten minutes later there is still one socked foot in the hall. Why children experience time differently, and what really helps when leaving the house.
Picture a Saturday morning. You want to be at grandma's by ten, it is 9.52, and your child is standing in the hall: one shoe on a foot, the other in their hand. They are telling you, at considerable length, about a beetle in the stairwell.
“We have to go,” you say. Your child nods pleasantly and keeps talking. For you, valuable time is passing. For your child, something important is happening.
The short version
- Dawdling is rarely deliberate: small children can make little of “in ten minutes”.
- The German Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG) advises announcing the end of playtime a few minutes beforehand.
- Reliable daily routines help, because your child knows what is coming and when they may carry on playing.
- Instructions work better when you go over, make eye contact, and say only one thing at a time.
- Time can be made visible: with an egg timer, a song, or a sequence to tick off.
Why do children dawdle?
Dawdling, from an adult's point of view, means it is taking longer than it needs to. From a child's point of view, something else is usually going on. Your child is absorbed in their game, or the route from sock to shoe passes a very interesting spot on the carpet.
On top of that, time is abstract. Of two-year-olds, the German Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG) writes that they do not yet understand statements about time. Children generally learn to tell the time at primary school — and even then “a quarter of an hour” says little about how long that feels.
And some of the dawdling is simply necessary. The psychologist Elke Leger writes in the IFP family handbook that parents should accept that boredom is part of it: ideas of a child's own grow out of it. Not every slow afternoon is a problem.
How do you tell children how much time is left?
What helps are announcements tied to something your child can see or hear:
| Instead of | Better |
|---|---|
| “We have to go soon.” | “Two more goes on the slide, then we put our shoes on.” |
| “Hurry up, it's late.” | “I'm setting the timer for five minutes. When it rings, we go.” |
| “Dinner in a quarter of an hour.” | “When the audio story finishes, there's dinner.” |
The common thread: there is a recognisable end point. Your child does not have to guess, and you do not have to ask three times.
What helps with the transition?
Announce it beforehand. The BIÖG advises saying a few minutes in advance that you will be eating or leaving. Then your child can finish their game themselves rather than being pulled out of the middle of it. The child and adolescent psychotherapist Klaus Fischer also names missing warning time in the IFP family handbook as a classic trap.
Soften the transition. The BIÖG suggests flowing changeovers: the toy car may still go into the garage, or the rabbit is hungry too and can join the meal. It sounds silly and saves a lot of arguing.
Go over rather than call, one thing at a time. An instruction from the kitchen often never arrives in the bedroom, and “shoes, coat, hat, and where's your rucksack?” is quite a list. The AOK's ADHD parent training advises giving only one instruction at a time and then checking whether it has landed.
Say what should happen. Fischer advises positive instructions rather than prohibitions, and staying nearby until your child carries the instruction out rather than walking off again straight away. Empty threats are among the traps he names too: “Fine, I'll go without you” works exactly once.
“Ten minutes” is not a measure of time to a child; it is a feeling.
How do you make time visible for children?
Egg timer or hourglass. A device that ticks and rings takes over the role of the nag. It is not you saying time is up, it is the timer.
A song as a unit of measure. “Until the song ends” is something nursery children already understand – for brushing teeth, getting dressed or tidying up, that is often enough.
The sequence rather than the clock. More important than times is an order that stays the same every day. Reliable routines also show your child that after dinner the game carries on. Knowing that makes stopping easier. What that can look like in the morning is set out in a morning routine with children, and for the whole week in a weekly plan for children.
What if it still takes ages?
- Find the bottleneck. Does it stick at the same point every day? Often it is not “everything” but getting dressed or getting out of bed.
- Bring forward what can be brought forward. Doing the school bag, the clothes and the lunch box in the evening takes half the drama out of the morning.
- Change the order. Sometimes it is enough to put getting dressed before breakfast rather than after.
- Talk later, not in the middle. Conversations about principles do not belong in the tense moment, says the ADHD parent training, but in a calm one afterwards. More on that in when children do not listen.
- Ask for less. One thing that works reliably is worth more than five you argue about daily.
If your child also has considerable difficulty over a longer period with starting, staying with something or concentrating, a conversation at your paediatric practice or a family counselling service is worthwhile – not because dawdling is an illness, but because that is the most likely way to identify other causes.
How Fleißstern takes the pace out of the hallway
In Fleißstern you set up once the steps that come round every day, sorted into morning, afternoon and evening. In the children's view your child only sees what is due today, ticks it off themselves and watches the ring fill up with every task done. It is not you reminding them of the next step; it is the list.
If you like, a task can have a fixed time and a reminder. And after a few weeks the statistics show you where it regularly sticks.
Common questions
Why does my child dawdle all the time?
There is usually no intent behind it. Children are absorbed in their play and can still make little of statements about time – the German Federal Institute for Public Health points this out explicitly for two-year-olds. More helpful than hurrying them along are fixed routines and announcements tied to something visible.
At what age do children understand “ten minutes”?
That develops gradually and differs from child to child. Children generally learn to tell the time at primary school, and even after that a quarter of an hour is hard to judge. In daily life an egg timer, an hourglass, a song or a fixed order therefore often works better than a number of minutes.
How do I announce the end of playtime without an argument?
The German Federal Institute for Public Health advises announcing a few minutes beforehand that you will be eating or leaving, and making the transition flowing: the toy car may still go into the garage. It also matters that your child knows they may carry on playing later.
Does turning getting dressed into a race help?
As a change on a single day, there is nothing against it. As a permanent solution it wears off, and with siblings it quickly becomes a contest. More reliable are a fixed order, a visible end point, and enough slack.
Sources
- Wie erreiche ich, dass unsere Tochter (2 Jahre) ohne Geschrei ihr Spiel unterbricht? – kindergesundheit-info.de, German Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG)
- Kindliche Trotzphase – kindergesundheit-info.de, German Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG)
- Grenzen setzen in der Erziehung (Klaus Fischer) – IFP-Familienhandbuch, Bavarian State Institute of Early Childhood Research
- Zeitmanagement: Wie Kinder lernen, mit Zeit umzugehen (Elke Leger) – IFP-Familienhandbuch
- Memokarte Wirkungsvolle Aufforderungen (ADHS-Elterntrainer) – AOK-Bundesverband
- Förderliche Haltung (ADHS-Elterntrainer) – AOK-Bundesverband