Tell the child the total journey time. Every 5 minutes or at each visible landmark, they estimate how many minutes are left. Parent confirms or corrects. The error is tracked and the child tries to improve. Turns time anxiety into a navigation game.
How to do it
- 1Before you leave, tell them the total journey time. Ask when they think you will arrive.
- 2Every five minutes, or at each visible landmark, they guess how long is left.
- 3Tell them the real answer. Track how close they got.
- 4Notice whether the estimates improve as the journey goes on. They usually do.
Variations
- If they refuse to estimate, make it collaborative — 'I think 10 minutes, what do you think?' — removes the solo-guess pressure.
- How it ends: when you actually arrive, stop keeping score — arrival itself is the win.
💡 Parent tip
The 'are we there yet?' question disappears when you replace it with a task. This gives children something to do with the time anxiety instead of just experiencing it.
What your child develops
- Time estimation — building intuitive sense of duration
- Spatial reasoning — mapping progress through a journey to time remaining
- Self-correction — iterating estimates based on feedback
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