As we mark the coming of the new year, our thoughts often turn to the nature of time and the fleeting, transitory nature of the passage of our days. Some of us resolve to use our time differently in the days ahead …

In my book, Time to Teach, Time to Learn: Changing the Pace of School, I detail the developmental unfolding of children’s understanding and experience of time and how different it is from ours as adults. Children live much more in the present moment than we do, which can make their childhood and educational experiences rich and deep–if we protect their time, making their schedules and transitions and their academic and activity loads reasonable at given ages and stages of development. If we try to “hurry up” our children to accommodate our increasingly fast-paced adult world, if we try to impose on them our misconceived beliefs that we must cram more teaching into the school day to make our children globally competitive, we inherently tamper with the nature of childhood.

We see the results of such tampering in the rising tide of special education needs and children struggling with ADD and ADHD. We see it in the increasing percentages of children on psychopharmacological drugs. We see it in the general increase of inattention and behavioral issues reported by teachers and parents around both school and home activities. ADHD expert Russell A. Barkely, Ph.D. notes that “recent research suggests that those with ADHD cannot sense or use time as adequately as others in their daily activities, such that they are often late for appointments and deadlines, ill-prepared for upcoming activities, and less able to pursue long-term goals and plans as well as others. Problems with time management and organizing themselves for upcoming events are commonplace in older children and adults with the disorder.” This is confirming evidence of the tyranny of time faced by so many of our children today.

In chapter nine of Time to Teach, Time to Learn, I suggest over thirty specific strategies for the classroom teacher to consider in addressing time constraints in the classroom for all children, but especially for those most organizationally challenged. In my next blog post, I’ll talk about the one strategy I consider most important in classrooms today.

In an important footnote to the history of childhood, I note that the 25th edition of David Elkind’s groundbreaking book about children and time, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon, is currently available in paperback.