To say my son has interests is putting things mildly. He develops obsessions with things. Deep interests in subjects that have him enthralled for hours, weeks, days or months. And then just as quickly as they arrived, they leave. We’ve had Thomas the Tank Engine, dinosaurs, Batman, trains, Skylanders and of course Minecraft – the current love of his life.
He can recite facts and figures that would make some of the biggest adult geeks out there stop in their tracks on all of these topics. If he puts that big brain of his to good use one day he may well be able to keep me in the lifestyle to which I wish to become accustomed. At the moment he’s simply setting himself up for a lifetime of geek heroism at some peculiar retro convention.
He seems to be developing another interest alongside Minecraft (could this be a sign of growing up, this be able to be interested in more than one thing at a time?) at the moment. He seems to be developing a small obsession with running.
Don’t get me wrong, he has no interest in actually running, that’s far too much like hard work and this is the child that was desperate to try skateboarding and then gave up after an couple of lessons cause he couldn’t do all the cool jumps yet. It’s more that he’s developing an interest in all of the paraphernalia that goes along with running. He’s basically becoming a gadget geek. It started when I bought a running water bottle, you know the sort you can put your hand through to carry easily when you run? He loved it, so much that I ended up buying him one (they are only £2.99 in Sports Direct) so that I was allowed to use my own again.
And now he’s moved onto my Garmin.
He ‘needs’ to use it to clean his teeth with because it has a stop watch so he can see that he cleans his teeth for two full minutes. He ‘needs’ to use it to check the clock is right “because sometimes I think that clock is wrong, mummy”. He ‘needs’ to use it to run up and down the drive and see how many fast he can do it (20 seconds, if anyone’s interested).
It’s becoming so that when I can’t find it I have to go and check his bed. “But I was timing how long it would take me to fall asleep.”
It’s become clear that if I ever want to use my Garmin for running again, especially if I don’t want the battery to die half way through a 5 mile run, that I am going to have to get him a stop watch all of his own. I’ve been eyeing watches for his birthday next month – one with lots of buttons to fiddle with that make a satisfying beeping noise when you press them.
Which means I’d be able to continue my training without having to spend an hour hunting for my blummin’ Garmin before hand – practically a workout of its own.
Do your kids get obsessed with things? Is it a boy thing? My daughter never really gets that involved with anything in particular. Or am I simply raising an enormous geek that’s going to be living with me until I die of old age?
Oh dear lord, I am aren’t I? Pass the wine!
