When Your Vision Is Ahead of Your Development: A Lesson From My 5-Year-Old

Every night, my kids and I have a little ritual.

We talk about two things that were good about the day and two things that were hard.

Last night, my five-year-old’s hard thing surprised me:

“I can’t read. I’m really annoyed that I can’t read yet. There are all these amazing books and all these things I want to know, but I can’t because I don’t know how to read.”

I reminded him that he actually can read. He can read some pretty advanced words, certainly more than I would expect a five-year-old to know.

He looked at me and said, “Well, that’s not good enough. I want to know what’s in these books, and I can’t do it on my own. And that is very annoying.”

And I realized that I was trying to reassure him about his progress when his frustration wasn’t really about his progress.

He can already see where he wants to go. He watches his older brother read chapter books. He watches this parents read. We have reading nights together, and in his mind, he is ready to enter those worlds independently. He wants access to the stories, the information, the ideas. He can imagine himself doing it. The destination is clear to him.

But he is five. His vision is ahead of his development. And no amount of wanting, determination, intelligence, or frustration can completely eliminate the developmental process required to get from here to there.

I think there is something profoundly human about that. How many times in our own lives can we clearly see where we want to go? We can envision the career. The business. The relationship. The healing. The confidence. The person we want to become.

Sometimes we can see it so clearly that it almost feels like we should already be there.

And then comes the frustration.

Why am I not there yet?

Why can't I do this yet?

Why is this taking so long?

Maybe sometimes the answer isn't that we aren't capable.

Maybe we simply aren't ready YET.

There are things that cannot be rushed because something in us is still developing. We may need more knowledge. More experience. More emotional capacity. More practice. More confidence. More tolerance for uncertainty. Sometimes even our bodies and brains need time to catch up with what our minds have already imagined.

And perhaps the developmental task isn't simply getting to the vision.

Perhaps part of the development is learning how to live in the space between the vision and the ability to fulfill it.

My five-year-old doesn't need me to talk him out of wanting to read chapter books. I don't want to shrink that vision for him. And I don't need to convince him that he shouldn't be frustrated.

Right now, my job is to help him hold both:

“I really want this.”

and

“I can't do this yet.”

That space is uncomfortable.

But learning to tolerate that discomfort without giving up, deciding something is wrong with us, or demanding that the process move faster may be one of the most important forms of development there is.

I suspect he will read those chapter books sooner than he thinks. But maybe the bigger lesson he is learning right now has nothing to do with reading.

It is learning how to want something deeply, recognize that he isn't there yet, tolerate the frustration of becoming, and keep going anyway.

And at five years old, he reminded me that this is a lesson many of us are still learning.

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