In 2017, we took my two kids into the zone of totality for the eclipse. They were 4 years old. One has severe ADHD and some other related issues. I was worried about it, but it was absolutely fine. If you don’t have eclipse glasses on, there’s nothing to see – you can’t see the partial stages of the eclipse without them. There’s an instant just before and just after totality where you can see the very last and very first, respectively, rays that are uncovered. You’d need to be vigilant at those times.
Also, I highly recommend watching the Smarter Every Day YouTube episode about things to do before, during, and after totality. Lots of cool things you can set up and try to observe. I would absolutely keep my kid home to see it if they’d get to see totality. Here’s the link
This is true. It doesn’t get really fully dark until totality, and without glasses, the sun still looks like a disc until the instant before totality.
A bunch of things happen right at totality that you miss by being just outside the path.
If you haven’t seen one and you’re really close, it’s worth it to find a way to get into the path. Close to totality is meh. Actual totality is phenomenal. Like beautiful and sort of terrifying. Like the original meaning of “awe.”
It’s too late to edit this. Actually, there’s lots to see with your glasses off, and you’ll want to take them on and off to see different things. You only need them on when you’re looking at the sun itself. There are things to see without glasses, like looking at shadows, how colors are affected, reading a thermometer, etc. I tend to put my glasses on periodically to check the progress, but I didn’t watch it continuously.
Also, it’s true that it will damage your camera. My phone camera had a dot burned into it from my videos and photos.
Everyone’s acting like the eclipse emits deadly eclipse-rays that disintegrate everyone outside who’s not wearing glasses. Do you worry this much on non-eclipse days? “Oh, I can’t ever risk Johnny going outside; he might stare straight at the Sun”. It’s the same risk.
If the kid is old enough to understand that something really cool is going on, then he’s old enough to understand that, to see the really cool thing, he needs to use the special glasses you gave him. If he’s not old enough to understand that something really cool is going on, then he’s not going to stare at the Sun for the same reason that he normally doesn’t stare at the Sun.
Well. That’s the thing. You need to know your kid.
I don’t really expect my grandkids to stare at the sun directly. Their Mother knows better than me. She’ll make them safe. I’m sure.
Spice needs to ascertain her sons ability to follow directions and do as told. The “flailing his arms in bright sunlight” til they placed regular sunglasses on him kinda worried me. I admit.
I certainly wouldn’t let a bus driver or teacher to be able to watch more than one special needs child during it. He’d be home with me.
Maybe concentrate on the shadow phenomenon or the light and color change. Never mention looking up.
She’s said he like numbers alot, the thermometer might be interesting to him.
This is the key line for me. Do you think he can understand a bit of modeling–say, take a flaslight, a soccer ball, and a tennis ball, and model the eclipse? Can you use a bright light to show him how even if the tennis ball is mostly blocking the light, the edges of it will still be bright enough to be unpleasant to look at?
What can he understand?
My daughter was 4 at the last eclipse, and honestly it wasn’t a great experience for her: we were outside for hours, and she didn’t really get what was going on, just that she was hot and tired and bored. But if you can make it a shorter experience, with a fair amount of lead-in, I think it could be really special for him.
I think about the fact that, in my opinion, we took our kids to Disney World when they were too young to appreciate it. Now adults, they have very little memory of the trip, and would probably have been just as happy going to Chuck E. Cheese.
That is definitely a thing that happens. I remember talking to the kindergarten teacher who took kids on an all-day field trip to a big aquarium in a neighboring state. When they got back, all the kids could talk about was how awesome it was to stop at McDonald’s on the way.
But I think this is different, as the kid is interested in astronomy, and as this is an extremely rare event that they might not get to experience again (the next eclipse in the US is in 2033 but only in Alaska, and after that it’s 2044 but only Montana and North Dakota, and so on). And also if he’s not into it, the family isn’t out thousands of dollars.
Obviously it depends on the kid, but I’d lean toward making it happen.
There’s a really nice one with a duration of 5 minutes and 40 seconds coming in 2078. That’s 3 minutes longer than the eclipse of 2017, and it really depresses me that it will pass directly over me (like the 2017 eclipse) but I’ll be too covered in dirt to see it.
I don’t think it’s a question whether your kid can handle it, but whether you can handle it. I’m sure every parent is aware of exactly how much trouble a four year old can get into in the 20 seconds your eyes are off the kid.
I say absolutely take him out, but your job is not to watch the eclipse, it is to watch your son watching the eclipse.
The only danger is if he looks at the sun. For most of the eclipse that isn’t going to happen for the same reasons he doesn’t look at the sun any other Monday. As it gets close to totality is when he is going to be tempted to look without glasses, and will be the time to make sure he is wearing them.
Spend Saturday and Sunday practicing looking at the sun through eclipse glasses with him. If all you have are the cardboard glasses, maybe you can tape those over his regular sunglasses.
We kept him home. We watched it streaming on TV. It captured his interest for about 30-45 minutes which is a pretty good run. It was his first time seeing the US on a globe, and on TV he could see all the crowds, and it prompted him to ask how many people are in the Universe, and on Earth, and in the US, and in Michigan. (He’s a numbers kid.) I was able to point to the globe on TV and show him where we live.
He noticed how in every city it got darker and colder before the moon’s shadow passed over the sun, and I think he understood the basic concept. He’s been reading books about this stuff for a while. And he enjoyed the countdown timer for totality on every location. So he would say, “In 1:45 it’s going to get light outside again.”
“Yup.”
When we were at totality, I went outside. It looked like dusk, only the sun was overhead, so light was distributed evenly, which was a very strange effect. I took him outside to see how it was now getting darker here, and colder here, but he was largely unimpressed by that point. Neither of us looked at the sun.
That’s about it. I think we did the best we could.
I think you did damn good. Your son was engaged, stayed focused, interacted, and enjoyed the experience. I’ll bet there are a lot of parents of neurotypical four-year olds who can’t say that about today.
I wasn’t with them. But apparently the 3yo twins both cried in unison at totality. They were not into the whole noisy thing. Walking and in strollers was a long way from the car.
But the adults and older kids were very impressed.
Oh and the drive was horrid.
Thanks, @SpiceWeasel, for telling us what you and your son did! Most 4-year-olds of any type wouldn’t be interested in anything that long.
Where I live, 90% coverage meant that my south-facing apartment got VERY dark. I went outside with my glasses and watched it, and asked a neighbor boy who passed by (school was cancelled for today in my town) if he wanted to look. He did, asked me if it would get totally dark, and when I said it wouldn’t, thanked me and went on his way.
