7 Things Children Can Teach Us About Slowing Down
Children have a completely different relationship with time, for example a five-minute walk to the park can somehow take half an hour because there is a stick worth examining, a puddle that absolutely must be jumped in and a tiny insect on the footpath that has become the most interesting thing anyone has seen all morning. Us adults tend to experience the same walk rather differently, usually with an eye on where they need to be next and whether there is enough time to get there.
Living alongside children can make the speed of adult life feel strangely obvious. We hurry through breakfast because we have somewhere to be, rush through the bath because bedtime is approaching and encourage everyone to put their shoes on while simultaneously answering messages, thinking about dinner and mentally running through tomorrow's schedule. Children, meanwhile, are often much more interested in what is happening right now.
They don't always make slowing down particularly easy, of course. A toddler stopping to examine every leaf when you're already late for an appointment can test even the most patient parent. But beneath the interruptions and delays, children have a different instinct for noticing the world, and there is something worth paying attention to in that.
1. They notice things adults have learned to overlook
A child can find enormous excitement in something most adults would walk straight past. A feather on the pavement, an unusually shaped cloud, a snail crossing the garden or a particularly smooth stone can all become worthy of stopping for, examining and discussing.
Children haven't yet developed the adult habit of filtering out everything that isn't immediately useful. Their attention is often drawn towards the small, strange and beautiful details that become invisible to us through familiarity. Walking with a child can be a reminder that the world hasn't actually become less interesting; we have simply become more accustomed to looking past it.
2. They understand that some things take as long as they take
There are very few ways to convince a child that something should happen faster simply because an adult has decided it needs to. A seed grows in its own time, toast takes as long as toast takes and a drawing isn't finished just because dinner is ready.
Children can be wonderfully resistant to the idea that everything needs to be optimised. They will spend twenty minutes building something that could have been assembled in two, or insist on tying their own shoes even when someone else could do it much more quickly. While there are certainly moments when a parent needs to keep everyone moving, there is also something useful in remembering that speed isn't always the point.
3. They can become completely absorbed in ordinary things
Give a child a cardboard box and there is a reasonable chance they will forget about the expensive toy that came inside it. Give them a bowl of water and a few cups and suddenly the afternoon has somewhere to go. Children can become deeply involved in simple activities because they aren't always looking for the next thing before they've finished with the current one.
Adults often struggle with this kind of attention. We read while checking our phones, eat while answering emails and watch television while scrolling through something else. Watching a child become completely absorbed in building a tower or arranging stones in a particular order can be a quiet reminder of how restorative it can feel to give one thing our full attention.
4. They don't always need a productive reason for what they're doing
Children are perfectly capable of spending an afternoon drawing, making up stories, collecting leaves or lying on the grass without needing to justify the activity. Their play doesn't have to produce anything useful at the end, and they don't seem particularly concerned about whether the time has been well spent.
Adults have become remarkably good at turning free time into another opportunity for productivity. We exercise, organise, improve, learn and catch up, often finding it difficult to simply do something because it feels good. Children offer a useful counterpoint to that mindset because they remind us that enjoyment is a perfectly reasonable reason to spend an hour.
5. They know how to return to the same thing
Children can read the same book every night for weeks, build the same kind of fort repeatedly or ask for the same meal several days in a row without feeling that they need to find something new. Repetition gives them comfort, familiarity and the opportunity to notice details they missed the first time.
Adults are often encouraged to seek novelty, whether that means finding new places to visit, new recipes to cook or new ways to spend our weekends. There is nothing wrong with novelty, but children remind us that returning to something familiar can be satisfying in its own right. A favourite walk doesn't need to become boring simply because we've taken it before.
6. They leave room for detours
A child's idea of getting from one place to another rarely resembles the most efficient route. There might be a tree to climb, a puddle to investigate or an interesting-looking rock that requires an immediate stop. The journey becomes part of the experience rather than merely something to get through on the way to the destination.
Of course, family life can't operate entirely on child pace. There are appointments, school pick-ups and places where everyone genuinely does need to arrive on time. But outside those moments, allowing a little room for detours can change the feeling of an ordinary day. Sometimes the unexpected part of the walk becomes the bit everyone remembers.
7. They remind us that being together is an activity in itself
Children don't always need a carefully planned outing or an elaborate family experience. They are often perfectly content to sit beside a parent while drawing, help with dinner, walk around the garden or climb into bed for a chat. The value is often in the togetherness rather than whatever happens during it.
This can be easy to forget when family life becomes busy and there is pressure to make weekends count, organise activities and create experiences that everyone will remember. Some of the moments children hold onto most strongly may be the completely ordinary ones, when nobody was trying particularly hard to create a memory and everyone simply had time to be together.
Slowing down with children doesn't mean abandoning schedules or pretending that modern family life can run at the pace of a summer afternoon forever. There will always be somewhere to go, something to organise and a list waiting at home. What children can offer, though, is a different way of noticing the time we already have. A walk can take a little longer. Breakfast can occasionally stretch into conversation. A garden can be explored rather than crossed, and an ordinary Tuesday afternoon can be allowed to remain ordinary without immediately needing to become something more. Perhaps the most useful lesson is that slowing down isn't necessarily about finding more hours in the day. Sometimes it is about being willing to experience the hours that are already there, rather than rushing through them in anticipation of whatever comes next.