Childhood fixations: Good or Bad?
Our son, who's nearly 3 years old, gets really fixated on stuff some times.
For example, when we first greet him in the morning, he usually says "Can I watch big outside piston trains?" which is his way of asking to watch train videos on YouTube.
Or, when we walk outside, he usually says "Can we go to the train station?" or "Are we going to the train station?"
Or, when at home, he says "Can we play trains?"
I'm mostly fine with this, except that I sometimes wonder if he's a bit too fixated on trains. We've spent the last week taking a break from any screen time, and that's really cut down on the requests to watch YouTube or trains on TV, but it some ways, it just shifts his focus to either playing trains or going outside to the train station.
I've often wished that he would play with different toys, or play trains in a more imaginative way. Is this something that I should be worried about? On the one hand, it's fun to foster something he loves, and on the other hand, I feel like his fixation limits the kinds of things that he enjoys doing.
Has anyone else dealt with a similar problem? How did you get by it?
3 Answers
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My son was fixated on trains like yours - since he was 18 months. Around age 4 he started losing interest. Now he's fixated on dinosaurs the way he used to be fixated on trains. We've coralled it to help him learn. We use his current interest to feed into others. He's learning to draw dinosaurs. We used trains to teach him colors. We get him outside and have him run like a T-rex, then fly like a pteranadon. We let him put a dinosaur in his pocket when he started playing soccer.
I think fixations are completely normal, and they'll grow as he grows.
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I think that's just the way some kids are. Our oldest has gone through phases of being obsessed with various things -- wind chimes, elevators, spelling, numbers, solar system, volcanoes, dinosaurs, wild weather, maps,.... Now, at almost 6, his obsessions are (mostly) less obsessive and last for shorter periods. We just go with it. We do try to broaden his interests by gently encouraging him to do something related to his obsession. For instance, going from spelling to numbers by having him spell out different numbers, talking to him about thousand, million, billion, quadrillion, etc. OR we take advantage of his interests and make him do other things with them (like art or learning to cut with scissors).
You could take your son to the train station and say, "wow, look at those tracks, I wonder how they make train tracks" then watch youtube videos about steel foundries (which could naturally follow into volcanoes). Or ask him where the tracks go and talk to him about geography. Or take walks along them or follow them in your car. Or ask what the train is carrying and who is going to use what is on it. Or draw pictures of trains. Or cut out pictures of trains from a magazine with pictures of what it could be carrying or who could be riding it and make a collage. Or have him memorize poems about trains.
But mostly, remember he is his own person. He is not going to like all the thngs you like and he needs to follow what interests him, so support him in that.
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Well, we all know we can't choose what someone else likes. And not everybody gets to do what they enjoy. I'd say your son is pretty lucky for finding something he loves.
And he's also pretty lucky that he has a father that cares so much.
I presume you've seen "Dinosaur Train" on PBS Kids? That's what we used for his "potty reward" while training him. :)
- Steve Lacy, May 20, 2010