Obsess Much?

My son has had several different obsessions in his short five years. His obsessions go something like this. He recognizes the toy, judges its irritability factor and then evaluates our ability to provide ample amounts of it. If it is difficult to find, it scores bonus points.

Then he talks about his “precious” ALL THE TIME. He dreams about it. He talks about how he is going to invite the characters over for a party. He takes the toy to sit with him while he eats breakfast; it waits while he takes a bath and even gets prime real estate on his pillow every night. He reads books about them so he can emulate their mannerisms to the highest degree of accuracy possible. This also serves him well when he is lecturing me about not following the correct protocol for whatever he supposed to be doing, including such seemingly simple tasks like WALKING and TALKING.

His first “love” was Rescue Heroes. If you aren’t familiar with the Rescue Heroes, let me tell you a bit about them. They are action heroes who run all over the globe helping people in need. There are no bad guys which is refreshing. They also have abnormally large feet, which tells me that the design team had a sense of humor, because we all know what they say about having large feet.

This particular obsession lasted over 2 years, which felt like 18 years to us considering how sick of them we were.

Right before his fifth birthday, he thankfully switched to Transformers. My husband loved this phase because it gave him an excuse to play with our son’s toys, since he just had to help him transform MegaOptiPrime-oid. If I had a dollar for every time my son came running up to me because Daddy wouldn’t give his toy back, I could fund a shopping spree.

Unfortunately for my husband, this phase has been cut short since our son has now started a new relationship with Star Wars. It started with the Star Wars Lego Game Cube game he received for Christmas and has continued with daily displays of various homemade Lego creations and flashlight light saber duels with his sister.

I have handled this obsession quite well since I harbored the same one when I was little. Now I know what it was like for my mom to endlessly listen to me drone on and on about light sabers, phasers and star destroyers. It is the classic “just-wait-till-you-have-kids-of-your-own” curse rearing its ugly head once again. Luckily he hasn’t resorted to making me call him by a different name. Yet. Until he gets to that point (I figure I have about 4-5 days still) I will continue arguing with him about who gets to be the Jedi and who gets to be the bad guy when we play. I’m older, so I should get first dibs anyway, right?

Alana Morales, who has a degree in Psychology and is a certified teacher, taught high school English for six years before staying home with her two children and becoming a freelance writer. Her fist book, Domestically Challenged, is due out in May. You can read more of Alana’s work and get information about her book at http://www.AlanaMorales.com.