If you have ever met my child you know that he has a very weird fascination with things that go round and round. Wheels, merry-go-rounds (Lord help me if I ever take him to a carnival), and especially fans. We have no clue where this fascination came from, but it ranks right up there on the list of stuff that drives me nuts. There is a tie between the food throwing and the rocking and then fans. This child can stand in his room and look at his ceiling fan for hours and say round and round and round and round… you get the picture. To make matters worse my in-laws have a ceiling fan in every. room. of. their. house. We at least only have two. Not only do they have so many ceiling fans, my SIL held the child up one day so he could touch one of the fans. Not while it was on. She is smarter than that. But ever since he wants to touch the fans. He has a Tigger airplane bike with a foam propeller on it that spins. The boy pushes the buttons to make it spin and sticks his hand in. His God parents gave him a sucker with a little fan on it for Easter and he does the same thing. He has a pinwheel that he loves. Anything with a fan, this kid goes ga-ga over. I am so sick of the fans I have half a mind to remove all fans from my home. But there is a catch.
Our house is a rambler style home. The entire front of our house faces south. No real trees to block the sun. Thus, it gets to be close to 100 degrees in our house in the summer. Butter turns into a puddle of melted goo if left on the counter. There is no respite from the heat here. The best we can do is move the hot air around. There is no way on God’s green Earth that I can justify buying an air conditioner in Washington State. So what do we move the air around with? You guessed it, fans. Do you see where this is going? Since I have a child that has a strange fascination with fans and a house that is full of them in the summer I have to do something.
I read an article in Wondertime about a woman who’s son was fascinated with buttons. She got tired of chasing him around and saying, “stop pushing that button” so she instituted button day. She let her son push every button in the house, took him out to the car and let him turn the stereo on and off, play with the windshield wipers and basically had a free day where he could push any button he wanted. Since then the child was done with buttons. I though if it worked for her truly this has to work for the boy. We don’t turn his fan on because the last time we let him really sit and watch a ceiling fan he got totally overstimulated. But that was months ago. However, the fan thing is driving me nuts. I declared Monday “Fan Day!”
I turned on the fan (slow speed) and turned it off when he wanted. I moved the Leap Frog table so he couldn’t reach the light switch and answered his beckon call every time he asked for the fan on or off. What a workout. If he asked for my office fan on I complied. Of course my child is the great tool fashioner so pretty soon he figured out that he could use his Lego box as a stool and turn the fan on and off himself. I was tired of getting up and down so I let him. I was sure that after a full day of free reign fan it would get out of his system and the fan thing would be done with.
It is now Wednesday and he’s still on the fan kick.
It is so great when you can figure out a way to get the kids to help themselves (i.e. turn the fan off and on).
I haven’t heard about the idea of letting them do stuff too much to get rid of the behavior, but it sounds like a good idea. I bet if you keep the stool there for awhile he will get tired of turning the fan off and on (maybe!).
For us, the worst is when Pineapple wants me to put her sweater on and do up every single miserable button just so she can take it right off and then put it right back on and cry if I don’t do up all the buttons again. After a few rounds of this I am ready for the crazy farm.
I tried the same idea, except with playstation. All my friends told me that their children got tired of the playstation after being allowed to play as long as they wanted. Not my 8 year old, he ended up glued to it for 3 days straight and would still be going strong if we had not insisted he do something else!
good idea about fan day…
I am pretty sure I am related to your mother.
Sorry about the fan thing… it was a good try:-)
we have the same tigger toy – and it usually gets the same reaction from our 19-month old! good thing the propeller is made out of foam 🙂
maybe in your house it will take a fan “week” to get the fan craze out of his system. but, never fear, once he’s done with fans – it will most probably be something else.
I don’t think that do-it-all-you-want thing works for my kids either. My solution is usually just saying “no! don’t!” a million times (louder and louder every time) and that doesn’t work very well either. 😉
I love this post. Soo funny!!! My girls are obsessed with my diamond neckless. I can’t make them stop pulling it. (normal baby thing) and I keep meaning to take it off but I don’t want to.
good luck…i have a feeling an AC might be in your future.
We have a saying and philosophy in our house..”this to shall pass”. There have been a bunch of things our kids (2 1/2) have been completely facinated with that have come and gone. When possible we try to allow them access to what they’re so interested in doing and it seems that after a week or two they move on to something else. I recently allowed them to put their CDs in their CD player. At first they were at it all day long, pushing buttons, turning up the volume and putting the CDs in and out. Now it’s not as interesting and they actually use it as intended. Now just because it pass doesn’t mean it doesn’t drive us crazy at times but at least we know it will pass.