RFT research has since shown that it’s not until a particular type of relation is learned that this sense of self, of being a separate being, emerges. This type is referred to as deictic relations, which means “to learn by demonstration,” but that is an arcane technical term, so here I will call them perspective-taking relations. All of these require a certain vantage point to be understood, such as knowing that you are here rather than there. A relation like that can be hellacious for kids to learn because the speaker’s “here” is the listener’s “there” and vice versa. As a result, when you go there, there becomes here and here becomes there! (You can almost see little kids in their frustration thinking, “Could you freakin’ make up your minds?!”) But with enough demonstrations, children do learn perspective-taking relations. The three most critical are I versus you, here versus there, and now versus then. Children usually learn them in that order: person, place, and time. This magic happens somewhere around age three or four. The perspective-taking relations of person, place, and time merge into an integrated sense of perspective: a sense of observing from “I/here/now” appears.