I have read several blogs where they state that their children love teaching to the soft toys or play pretend games with those toys. But my son doesn’t like soft toys or the baby dolls. Once I coaxed him to read a book to his teddy bear. He started reading and then he said “mommy, the teddy bear is not looking”, it is not listening, and so on and on. His gestures showed me that he realized that the teddy bear is not alive or interactive. So, I stopped asking him to play with those soft toys.
I have also heard that children memorize complete books. But my son, after reading ‘Brown bear what do you see’ started framing his own stories like ‘turtle (any toy) what do u see, i see mommy looking at me, mommy mommy wat do u see, i see daddy looking at me and so on’. After listening to ‘5 little monkeys jumping on the bed’, he frames something like ‘2 little penguins jumping on the bed’ etc.
So the question I have is ‘Are any of your children like mine’. If so, please share your stories.
My son likes to make up his own stories too. When we read books together, he likes to add extra words to or sometimes made up his own.
He likes to create new lyrics for nursery rhymes I sing to him before bed and coax me to sing the made-up lines. lol
However, when he has his mind set on something, it’s very hard to convince him otherwise. For example, he has seen that Saturn has rings and that’s how he remember Saturn…when we read another planet book which explains more in details that some other planets have rings too. He was not happy to see rings around Jupiter! To him, the only planet with rings is Saturn!!
8)
I think it is great he is making up his own versions of the story. It shows great creativity. Also, all kids are different in what they do and like. My son loves balls. His friend loves cars with the same intensity that my son loves balls. There is also a big difference between boys and girls which may have something to do with the not wanting to play with the soft animals. Who knows.
I think the challenge is finding what makes them tick and capitalizing on it. Good luck!
Recently we had been to a playgroup where there was a doll buggy and a doll in it. There were also few cars lying around. My son took the doll and threw it far away as if he didn’t care for it. He took few cars and put those in the buggy and started rocking. I was dumb-struck. Its a pure boy thing.
Until now, I was trying to play games with soft toys that I enjoyed myself as a child. Now it is time for me to forget those and play pretend games with cars, wheels and magnets.
arvi, your story made me laugh. lol Anyone who says boys and girls are different purely because of environment has not spent much time with little boys or little girls! My sister had a girl first and then a boy. She said her child development courses had made her think that environment/socialization was what contributed to gender differences. Then when she had a boy she was shocked. Her boy was as boy as they come!
Oh yes I agree there are some definately differences. When I was at uni our gender lecturer tried to tell a room full of mums that the differences between boys and girls were based on expectations and environment. Boy was that a noisy lecture! In the end I stood up and told her that clearly she had no children or only had girls and so had no idea what she was talking about. I suggested ( politely) that perhaps before conducting this lecture again she spend a week in a daycare centre with the 2 year olds because my son was clearly very different to his 2 sisters before his second birthday. The rest of the lecture was much more useful as many parents/students took to the floor to describe their specific experiences. I couldn’t believe this is the stand they were teaching us teachers…to treat boys and girls the same way would be incredibly detrimental to the boys education…especially since the majority of teachers are female.
Arvi my son only plays with dolls and soft toys only while his sisters are there planing and directing the game. When they arnt around I have never once seen him play with a soft toy. It’s all trains, cars, boats and balls. He does include imaginative dialogue for them…this may be a copied action from watching his sisters playing with the dolls.