Nearly as quickly as our son was born, we obtained these phrases of recommendation from family and friends with older children. ‘Try to take pleasure in each minute of it, as a result of the times would possibly really feel lengthy however the years will go by rapidly.’

I took the recommendation to coronary heart. I used to be in my 40s after I turned a mother — time already felt valuable. My being pregnant hadn’t been straightforward. Severe problems within the third trimester had compelled my son into the world six weeks earlier than his due date. So, by the point we introduced our tiny 4 pound 9 ounce preemie dwelling, I used to be decided to take pleasure in each minute with him.

I needed to recollect every valuable element — his scent, the little animal sounds he made within the early weeks, the primary time he rolled over and all the opposite early milestones. I hoped that by laying down these reminiscences, I may decelerate our time collectively, so the years would not fly by rapidly.

Pondering again, I did succeed considerably, however just for temporary moments.

For instance, when he flashed his first voluntary smile at my husband and me, it felt as if the seconds expanded into minutes. I had the identical expertise the day he turned 2 months outdated, once we bathed him, weighed him, and heaved a collective sigh of reduction as a result of he was not the skin-and-bones-preemie, however a wholesome, chubby child. Then there was the time he first army-crawled, elbow by elbow, out of his nursery, months earlier than he discovered to do the true crawl.

And but, now that he is almost 3 years outdated, I look again and surprise: How did these months and years go by so rapidly? How is my child already a strolling, speaking, tantruming toddler, who tells tales and jokes? And on the times that he says issues like “depart me alone,” or “give me area,” I can not assist lacking my candy, cuddly child.

The science behind candy, in-the-moment ‘baby-time’

Is there a scientific clarification, I questioned, for this shared expertise of in-the-moment baby-time? And why is it that even once we mother and father do handle to make time decelerate within the second, the years nonetheless go by so quick?

It seems, researchers say, it is as a result of our mind’s notion of time is fluid — decided by the sorts of experiences we’ve and the way we expertise issues within the second.

“We do not have a single notion of time,” says Peter Tse, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth Faculty. “We’ve a notion of time within the second — perceptual time, you would possibly name that. After which you have got the way you regard time by wanting via your reminiscences.”

To make a long-lasting reminiscence, listen

The mind perceives time primarily based on how a lot data it’s processing at any given second, he provides, which in flip is determined by how a lot consideration we’re paying to what we’re doing and what’s occurring round us.

“If you happen to’re paying consideration, you are really processing extra models of knowledge per unit of goal time,” says Tse. And that makes time really feel subjectively longer.

This could occur once we are in a brand new place, absorbing all of the little particulars round us. It could additionally occur once we’re having an emotionally charged expertise.

“So, if you happen to’re driving and also you’re skidding and about to hit the again of a automobile,” he explains, “it appears to go in gradual movement as a result of all of the sudden your mind’s processing tons of knowledge and also you’re absolutely attentive.”

The identical applies to the nice, emotionally-engaging moments we share with our children.

On a latest morning, whereas strolling my son to his daycare, I seen that the grass on the sidewalk and the sphere throughout the road have been lined with the primary frost of the winter.

I used to be so excited to point out this to my son, that I forgot we have been working late. We stopped so he may contact and really feel the skinny silvery layer of ice crystals on the grass and dried leaves beneath our ft. It was his first time encountering frost and he was awe-struck.

I do not keep in mind how lengthy we stood there as he picked up leaf after leaf, gently touching the frost together with his fingers, watching it soften, asking questions. However I do keep in mind that, for me, every part else zoomed out, and I felt as if time stood nonetheless.

“In these kinds of two-way interactions that we’ve with our youngsters, they’re very all-encompassing for us,” says psychologist Ruth Ogden at Liverpool John Moores College within the U.Okay. “They’re joyful moments — one thing that you just treasure eternally. And that signifies that whenever you’re in them, you are not excited about the rest.”

So our brains are capable of course of numerous data in these moments, making new reminiscences. Even now, after I suppose again to that morning, I can clearly keep in mind the tiny icy needles on particular person leaves of grass, the tip of my son’s index finger because the frost melted again into dew drops, and the awe in his eyes as he discovered one thing new concerning the world round him.

But when parenting is filled with these lovely memory-making moments, why then, do our children’ childhoods appear to go by so rapidly looking back?

That has to do with the much less enjoyable a part of parenting, explains Ogden.

Combine up your routine

“Parenting is filled with routine, it is filled with group. It is filled with – for need of a greater phrase — monotony.”

Contemplate the routine of caring for a new child. “You spend numerous time in the home, you spend numerous time attempting to get them to fall asleep on the identical time,” she explains.

It is tedious, boring work that makes us mother and father function in auto-pilot mode, as a result of we have accomplished it 100 instances earlier than.

It is the kind of work that does not make new reminiscences, says Tse.

Even when we have been to be attentive and current throughout each diaper change, he explains, our brains would not file away a brand new reminiscence for every diaper change, or each stroll to the daycare, as a result of it is not processing them as new occasions.

“Looking back, they only appear to have both not occurred or they get squished along with all the opposite comparable occasions,” he says. “So your sense of time retrospectively is compressed.”

However there is a strategy to counter this, says Ogden, by focusing much less on routines, and extra on creating these “lovely, incidental moments” with our youngsters.

She herself has been attempting to include new and completely different actions along with her children.

“The extra you break the time out with completely different actions or various things to do,” she says, “then the extra likelihood you have obtained of constructing these good reminiscences — the issues that you will keep in mind, the issues which can be going to assist to stretch out your retrospective emotions on how the years handed.”

As I feel extra about these previous few years with our son, I notice that final yr — 2022 — appeared to have lasted longer than the 2 years prior. And that is in all probability as a result of we purposely broke away from a few of our routines with him to have new experiences, and make new reminiscences as a household.

We traveled extra with him throughout the USA, in addition to to India — our first time taking him to fulfill my household. My father, who lives in India, visited us for an prolonged time period. So he may lastly bond with this grandson and share within the joys of strolling him to daycare and again. We went tenting in Maryland over the summer time — with my 79-year-old-father and our 2-year-old — an journey we are going to keep in mind for the remainder of our lives.

And as I write down these valuable reminiscences, I additionally notice that it might be simply as necessary to actively recall and share them with our son as he grows up and the years go by. Maybe that is one other strategy to decelerate time — and remind us all that childhood would not occur within the blink of a watch.

This story is a part of our periodic science collection “Discovering Time — a journey via the fourth dimension to study what makes us tick.”