Toddlers have no sense of time. That can make mornings afternoons all of the time really hard. How do you let your child know you are going to be leaving the playground so that they’ll understand? How do you get across that an event will happen, but not yet? There are three phrases I use to help a toddler understand time.

These phrases will seem really obvious, but let me tell you that I don’t hear them used often enough by parents. I tend to hear “We are leaving in 5 minutes” or something along those lines. Let me clue you in: toddlers have no idea what that means. So here are the phrases that really work.