We’ve found that our 5-year old tends to become obsessive over various interests. I don’t know if this is normal since he’s our first, or whether Kevin has an abnormally obsessive personality. After enduring the same 3 notes of “Carol of the Bells” on his toy piano over and over for hours, days, weeks on end around Christmas time, with the Spring thaw came his love of insects. We thought we were over the hump last year when he was fascinated with “Brood X” and collected an entire jar full of cicada carcasses and winter came. Well, this year brought a new brood of cicadas and the cycle started all over again. Every spider, beetle and ant Kevin encountered continued to bring wonder and amazement. He sleeps with a book entitled “Amazing Insects” which is full of insect facts for kids.
Indulging Your Child’s Love of Insects
Figuring that this may be the only time in his life that he’s this enthusiastic over anything, we caved and further indulged his love of insects.
1. This spring, we purchased a butterfly house and caterpillars. Watching them hatch, eat and eventually be let free to fly away was such a big deal to him. When butterflies were flying around our porch later in the year, we told him they came back to visit him and he was thrilled.
2. While on vacation, we found a local Butterfly House that allowed you to hold little sticks with sugar on them to attract the butterflies and they’d come right up to you.
3. To cap it off, we found out there there was an exhibit in a nearby city entitled, “BugFest”. On a whim, we researched it that night and went that weekend. It was really something. We arrived and they had beetles baked into crackers you could eat (Survivor Style!), insect-crafts, educational time with entomologists, and best of all – Amazing Insects! They had these crazy leaf-looking insects, crazy spiders, a rhinoceros beetle, every exotic insect you could think of. Kevin was amazed – and happy.
While not every kid is quite as enthusiastic as Kevin is about insects, it makes him happy and it beats being enthralled with a video game console or television. While it would be nice to get a break from the incessant chatter about how he befriended a new beetle today and how many cicada carcasses he collected, we’re thrilled to indulge his passion. Our 3-year old has a passion for dinosaurs that I’ll be blogging about next – subscribe for free in a Reader if you want to hear part 2.
What are your kids’ silly passions and how do you indulge them?
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Our boys are huge into superheroes. So they have lots of costumes and comics and books and toys. I think this summer we’ll do a unit to learn about different heroes.