Is It Going to Get Dark Today?

We often wonder about Evan's concept of time. (As I am no expert on child development, I have no idea about the typical three-year old's concept of time.) One of his most frequent questions throughout the day, other than, "Why?," is that of, "Is it going to get dark today?" Our usual response is that it is not going to be dark for a long time. Sometimes that response is sufficient, but other times he keeps asking the question and telling us that he does not want it to get dark. We have yet to pin down what about the impending and inevitable darkness concerns him, as he has never shown any fear of the dark. Perhaps he is worried that his day will go by too quickly, but this seems unlikely given his general impatience. It definitely seems that he has little sense of the hours that pass between sunrise and sunset. He also seems to have little sense of the passage of days. When he wakes up in the morning, he never knows whether it is the weekend, a school day, a Mommy day, or a nanny day. If we try to tell him that something will happen tomorrow, he will respond, "Is that today?" The exchange of tomorrow and today between Evan and us can go on for quite a while. After a typical conversation that involved time and darkness, Greg remarked that Evan wants the day to never end so that we can do everything in one day and not have wait for anything until tomorrow. Now that sounds like a three year old's dream.