Taking Time For Granted

What if you woke up one morning and there were no clocks anywhere? So for that day, you would not be able to tell the time? How would you navigate through your day? How long would it be before you got frustrated or anxious because you didn't know how long something would last and you didn't know when the next event in your life was going to start? I think we take our clocks for granted. They are always present so we don't have to give them much thought.

What if you had an intellectual disability and you couldn't tell the time, ever? Don't get me wrong, many people with intellectual disabilities can tell time. But many cannot.

If you couldn't tell time, you would watch and find comfort in the normal rhythms of the day. If the sun is up, it's morning. If it's time for my shower, breakfast will be next. If I get my coffee after breakfast, the van will pick me up for work, soon. And so on. A person could happily go through much of their day based on the predictable events that mark their life. But what about if the schedule gets changed? I've seen a lot of frustration over very small changes in someone's schedule. Daylight Savings Time is very troubling, for example. One morning a person wakes up and it is light out. The next day they wake up at the same time but it is dark. It can take weeks for someone to adjust to this change.

Once at one of the day programs, we had to do some painting in some of the habilitation rooms. We had to move individuals who use those rooms to the other side of the building for a week. It was the most upsetting week for them. We were trying to figure out why so many people were having such difficulty and trying to figure out how to support them through it. Come to find out, they couldn't see the vans coming and going from their new room. They had used the van schedule as their clock and without it, they were lost wondering what was coming next. We hadn't noticed how important this was to them until that day.


My daughter paces her day through a combination of sunlight and sunset, meals, and television shows. She doesn't have to watch the television to have it tell time for her. She just has to turn it on to see that SpongeBob means it is time to get dressed and Full House means it is time for bed. I think it is a clever adaptation that she figured out for herself.

When we see that someone has to keep to their schedule in a rigid fashion, is it because they find solace in the sameness or is it because it gives them the reassurance of what time it is?