A Household Word: Running on Kid Time

 By Carol Band

If you set your clock to kid time, an hour of TV isn’t nearly enough, 9 p.m. is way too early for bed, and Saturday morning, while your parents are still sleeping, is the perfect time to try to cut your own bangs.

I recently celebrated my birthday and my oldest son (sweet boy) gave me a T-shirt that says, "In dog years, I'm dead." Nice.

"Ha! You are over 300 years old!" my youngest figured with a burst of mathematical insight. Then he eyed the dog. "That means Chester is 21 ... Wooohooo! Go Chetty! You can buy beer!" Nice.

Although I seem to have a grasp of how canine time is calculated (after all, multiplying by seven, while not as easy as multiplying by five, is still fairly straightforward), I haven't been able to comprehend what makes my kids tick. The struggle for us to synchronize is a daily effort. Maybe that's because they aren't living on Eastern Standard, Central, Mountain or Pacific Time. They're on kid time.

If you set your clock to kid time, an hour of TV isn't nearly enough, 9 p.m. is way too early for bed, and Saturday morning, while your parents are still sleeping, is the perfect time to try to cut your own bangs. On the kid calendar, Christmas is always too far away, summer vacation lasts forever, and your birthday is a national holiday. If you ask my kids, they'll check their watches and tell you that recess is too short, math class is too long, and all teachers are all really, really old. Even older than their mom.

In kid time, sitting through an hour-long church service is equivalent to being stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean for a month. You are hungry. You are starving: "Mom, do you have any Tic Tacs?" ... "When will they pass out the little pieces of bread?" ... "I'm hungry, I'm thirsty." ... "Will there be donuts at coffee hour?" ... "I am starving. I am fading away. I am slipping under the pews. Ahhhh. ..."

Likewise, a 12-year-old boy who is supposed to practice the piano for 30 minutes will race through his piece and declare, "I'm done!," after a minute and a half. That's because a half hour of practicing the piano in kid time is like an adult spending three hours at a Weird Al Yankovich concert. It is interminable. Maybe we should be more understanding.