Also, as we grow older, the sense of our own mortality gets stronger, and we constantly re-examine our ideas of childhood, maturity, and old age from a different perspective. Jean Piaget, this century's foremost scholar of cognitive development, studied the way in which a child acquires an understanding of time. On the path leading to the Youth Wing, we laid down a long brass line. On this line we engraved every year in the twentieth century. Members of one family can space themselves along this line and understand the generation gap in a very immediate way.
Children live in the present.
Only at age four do they recognize the order of their daily routine. At six, some can list the months and holidays in the right order. Conceiving of very long time periods remains difficult even for teenagers. Each revolution of the pedals counts for one year. Of course not.