In which developmental stage do children first start to understand the concept of time?

Children begin to understand the concept of time during the preoperational stage, which typically spans ages 2 to 7 years. At this stage, children start recognizing sequences and can often relate to events through personal experiences, although their understanding of time remains relatively superficial. They may grasp the idea of past and future to an extent but lack a clear, logical comprehension of time intervals and durations.

During the preoperational stage, children's thinking is characterized by egocentrism and animism, and their cognitive abilities are still developing. This means that while they may understand events can occur in a sequence (like getting dressed, then eating), they do not yet fully grasp abstract notions of time that come with more advanced stages of development.

As they move into the concrete operational stage, children develop a more mature understanding of time, including the ability to use it to organize their experiences and understand relationships between events systematically and logically. This is when they can start to think more quantitatively about time. Thus, recognizing the transitional understanding of time in the preoperational stage helps clarify why this answer is appropriate for children's early comprehension of the concept.