Fun With Play-Dough

I have a three year old who is –how shall I put this- somewhat obsessive in his tastes. It means he won’t eat a damn thing unless he has his orange Shrek spoon, and he only wants to wear certain clothes on certain days.  When a cookie accidentally breaks in half, he refuses to eat it; when you give him a boiled egg he only eats the white part.  It’s not enough to leave the yellow part on his plate, it needs to be demolished, rubbed in the carpet, to drive the point home that yolks are not acceptable. Feeding him an egg means watching him at close range, and taking the yolk away from him as soon as it’s free; your movements have to be slick and fast, kind of like a cobra going for a bunny.

I hear this type of behavior is normal for three-year-olds, and I wonder: since when is normalcy established by frequency? Just because millions of toddlers around the world deem this behavior acceptable, we have to live with it?

The obsessive behavior isn’t restricted to feeding time either; it extends into television habits.

My son likes Elmo. I know; he’s not the only one.

That red freak entertains millions of children on a daily basis. They learn their ABC’s from him, potty training, how to not be scared of all kinds of crap, and how to stay healthy. They also learn it’s okay to speak of yourself in the third person, something I find so unbelievably irritating that I’m having trouble breathing just thinking about it.

And here’s where the obsession becomes a problem. Kids don’t want to watch Elmo once, or twice. They want to watch him 30 to 40 times. Per week. You know how an episode of CSI goes from exciting to tiresome after you see it two times? Little children don’t see the world that way. They want to watch, And then they want to watch again. And again.  They are not satisfied until they know all the dialogue by heart (including the little piece at the end where Elmo advertises Sesame Street-dot-com) and you, the parent, are standing in traffic hoping someone will run you over.

People without children always say, “why don’t you just refuse to put the DVD in the player?” Listen, by the time they’re three, they know how the DVD player works. Also, if you want to get any work done around the house at all, you aren’t going to fight over this. You put in the damn movie, you sigh, and you accept the inevitable.

I, too,  started out as one of those parents that said “No Television!” Trust me, I was convinced I would not use the television as a baby sitter. But then I realized I had to scrub the floor and do the dishes from time to time, and I gave up. 

Some day, you will too.