Temporal Concepts and Language Delay
In my last blog post, I shared the 6-year wait and recent "reveal" of our Universal Orlando/Disney Cruise trip. Planning for this trip consumes much of my free time these days, so I figured I'd just go head and blog about it.
Ken and I booked this trip late 2015. After narrowing down trip details, we had to decide when to tell the kids. We revealed the trip to our older kids on Christmas, but chose to not tell the boys until closer to our travel time. In the end, Tian, who can hear very well, picked up on our chats and figured out our secret well before the official reveal we did for them earlier this month. Travis, though, had no idea beyond knowing that we would "one day" go on a Disney Cruise (Mickey boat, as he calls it). If he would ask about a cruise, we would say, "We'll go when you're 9 or 10."
We considered not telling him at all until the day we were set to leave. In the past, when an exciting day is upcoming, he gets very frustrated that it isn't happening now! He has thrown fits, been mad at us, and shut down over it, so revealing the trip too soon wasn't something we wanted to do.
Over the past year, he's gotten a better grasp of far-in-the-future events. That, coupled with a few other facts...
- he needs the opportunity to actively countdown while coping appropriately with the wait
- extra calendar exposure never hurts
- the boys need to learn to snorkel before the trip
- the boys need to increase their hiking distance before the trip
- Travis needs to practice controlling his noise levels in appropriate settings
- both boys need to work on dinner manners
...led us to go ahead and tell them around Travis' birthday. I'm so glad we did! He hasn't been upset once and refers to the calendar often. This entire week passed with us forgetting to mark the days! That just makes the days pass even faster.
The advice I have to other parents who have kids struggling to grasp waiting over a long period of time is...just keep exposing your kids to a calendar. Use photos on your phone to go back in time and talk about how many days, how many weeks and months ago something happened. For Travis, relating time to the past seemed easier to grasp than the future. I feel like the understanding of the past was a foundation for the future time concepts to "click" for him.
The boys will be in camp for the next two weeks. After that, we plan on spending the summer working on our snorkeling, hiking, and dinner manners!
Ken and I booked this trip late 2015. After narrowing down trip details, we had to decide when to tell the kids. We revealed the trip to our older kids on Christmas, but chose to not tell the boys until closer to our travel time. In the end, Tian, who can hear very well, picked up on our chats and figured out our secret well before the official reveal we did for them earlier this month. Travis, though, had no idea beyond knowing that we would "one day" go on a Disney Cruise (Mickey boat, as he calls it). If he would ask about a cruise, we would say, "We'll go when you're 9 or 10."
We considered not telling him at all until the day we were set to leave. In the past, when an exciting day is upcoming, he gets very frustrated that it isn't happening now! He has thrown fits, been mad at us, and shut down over it, so revealing the trip too soon wasn't something we wanted to do.
Over the past year, he's gotten a better grasp of far-in-the-future events. That, coupled with a few other facts...
- he needs the opportunity to actively countdown while coping appropriately with the wait
- extra calendar exposure never hurts
- the boys need to learn to snorkel before the trip
- the boys need to increase their hiking distance before the trip
- Travis needs to practice controlling his noise levels in appropriate settings
- both boys need to work on dinner manners
...led us to go ahead and tell them around Travis' birthday. I'm so glad we did! He hasn't been upset once and refers to the calendar often. This entire week passed with us forgetting to mark the days! That just makes the days pass even faster.
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| The very non-Pinteresty countdown calendar we put together. (Made from a ChickFilA Cowlendar, thus the bovine feet) |
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| At Costco, he noticed this advertisement and found a picture of the Mickey Boat. |
The boys will be in camp for the next two weeks. After that, we plan on spending the summer working on our snorkeling, hiking, and dinner manners!
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