Children's Punctual Commute

On the way to dropping my children off at daycare, I sometimes see parents struggling with crying children. Some are soothing them, some are pulling them along forcefully, and some have already become unresponsive.

Every time I see this, I send a look of solidarity to them, thinking, 'It's tough, I know.'

It's the agony of being caught between the desire not to dismiss a child who is crying in protest and the social discipline of having to be on time. Even if you basically want to choose the former, there are times when the time limit is truly closing in and you have no choice but to choose the path of pushing forward, half-forcefully.

In the Egusa household, we also struggle daily with how to make it on time. Fortunately, in most cases, we can get to daycare smoothly, but sometimes, despite our best efforts, the children end up crying. Even so, when I have to make them conform to adult circumstances where we must go, I feel incredibly sorry.

And so, while raising children, what I really think about is the viciously bad compatibility between 'children' and 'being on time'.

It's not just about going to daycare; there are times when you have to move according to a schedule, such as when booking trains or making reservations for facilities. However, getting there according to that schedule is truly a struggle.

For small children, there is no sense of 'time' or 'the hour' to begin with. Therefore, they cannot share it as a goal. Even though I try to tell my two-year-old things like 'We're going at such-and-such time' or 'When the clock hand reaches 3,' it seems difficult for them to grasp that as a shared goal yet.

And in the first place, they don't have a sense of 'schedule' either. Rather than such an abstract future, if there's a flower blooming in a crack in the road right in front of them, they are more interested in that. If they see a vending machine, they want to play with the retrieval slot. Children live in the concrete 'here and now' right in front of them, so they don't care about invisible 'somewhere, sometime' schedules.

It is inevitable that trying to get such children to commute on time becomes a Herculean task. To children, what 'on time' is and why they have to keep it is completely meaningless.

Of course, as such children grow up, they gradually come to acquire such abstract thinking. My child is showing signs of that little by little. And there is also the idea that teaching children such social rules—like 'You must be on time' or 'You must keep your promises'—and having them internalize them is what education and discipline are all about. In fact, it is also troublesome if they don't learn social manners and rules at all.

However, I also feel that it is a matter of degree.

Honestly, I feel it is too cruel to force children who are not yet capable of abstract thinking to go along with a punctual commute. It feels like putting someone on a roller coaster when they aren't tall enough yet, or sending a new recruit to the battlefield without any training—I cannot deny that it feels like a cruel abandonment.

Even if, thanks to 'education,' a child comes to obediently follow a punctual commute, it might not be because they understand abstract concepts like 'time' or 'schedule,' but simply because they are afraid of the desperate look on their parent's face that says, 'We have to be on time.'

And that is also like teaching them, 'Even if you happen to see a beautiful flower on the side of the road, prioritize the schedule and ignore it.' It is disciplining a sudden detour or a sudden sense of wonder as a 'bad behavior' that will get you scolded by your parents.

Of course, just because you see a beautiful flower doesn't mean you should run straight into the road without looking and get hit by a car, so I think self-restraint and caution are necessary. However, I still feel a sense of danger in the idea that 'wandering' itself is considered wrong.

This is not to say that the parents who are struggling desperately are bad or negligent. As I mentioned at the beginning, I, Egusa, am one of those parents trying to make it on time.

However, watching the children like this, I think it is the adults who are being questioned in return.

'What is this punctual commute that you are protecting at such a cost (even at the cost of making us cry)?'

In fact, what is it, I wonder.