Obsession

Lily's first obsession was blocks. We used to play blocks all day long. We have several sets of blocks. The old fashioned wood blocks with squares, rectangles, triangles, cylinders, etc. She would stack, sort and build castles. Sometimes she would line them all up across the floor. So I started to buy all different types of blocks as this was her love. We have many different types of Lego's and deploys, we have the Lincoln logs, and some weird Japanese blocks. For months and months all Lily would play with was her blocks. Pretty much all day, except for outside time.

Eventually her love of blocks declined. To this day she still loves to play with block, but not in an obsessive all I can think of is blocks kind of way. Next was her puzzle obsession. Puzzles all day long. She got really good at the puzzles too. Right before we moved she was doing 100 piece puzzles all on her own, all day long. She had about 10 of them and she would go through the puzzles and then start again. Sometimes she would do her smaller ones, 25 or 50 piece, but mostly it was the hard ones. How sweet, she would sit quietly at the table and do one puzzle after another. Of course, she preferred to have me sit there and "help" her. I was not allowed to actually touch the pieces, but my moral support was somehow necessary.

After we moved, her love of puzzles dissipated. Now she does them occasionally, like the blocks. Since we have moved there really haven't been any obsessions. She has been playing with all her toys, different things everyday. Until a couple of days ago. Now we have a new obsession, numbers. Lily and I have been learning to count for probably over a year. I bring it up now and then. She counts to 100. For the longest time the way she counted to 100 was weird. She was a bit confused, she thought that 30 was the same as 13, and 40 was the same as 14, etc. So counting she would say twenty-nine, thirteen, thirteen-one, thirteen-two, thirteen-three, etc. What to do.

When Mandy was little I was also very young. I was obsessed with correcting her. I would actually argue with the child until she understood the "right way". About everything, I felt the need to show her the right way. That didn't work out so well. With Lily I try to pick my battles. I ask myself, is it really important to correct her? She is three, what difference does it make if she counts WRONG? One time I had a nightmare where she couldn't graduate from high school because couldn't count to 100 correctly. Still, I didn't correct her. I just let her count any way she wanted and then gave her a big hug and told her great job. It was actually killing me. I kept hoping Mandy wouldn't hear her count, cause Mandy would correct her. I don't know where she gets that (?).

So I came up with this plan to show Lily how to count correctly without telling her she was wrong, without correcting her. This was about 6 months ago, back in Japan. I couldn't find any flash cards that show numbers up to 100 so I bought some of those magnet numbers. I would sit on the floor with her and we would count to 100 with the magnet numbers, making each number one at a time form 1 until 100. She enjoyed this about once, and then she would take the numbers away from me and play with them her way. Which was lining them all up by color, or sometimes in numeric order.

Next I tried writing the numbers on paper, from 1-100 in little rows and columns. I am thinking here that if she sees the 13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 50, 16 and 60... are different that she will stop counting WRONG. I do realize that I am crazy as hell, but at least I am not correcting her. I am still letting her count to 100 any way she wants, I can just imagine my parent teacher conference, Lily can't count correctly... The writing the numbers did not hold Lily's attention. She wanted to write the numbers, even separate papers did not work, she would take the crayon out of my hand.

Next plan. I showed Lily how to type on Mommy's computer, now officially known as Lily's computer. I sat beside her and put spaces between the numbers and returns at the end of a group of ten. We did this for about a week before she was interested enough to get all the way to 100. Once she typed all the numbers from 1-100, she was hooked. She loved it so much that now all she wants to do, all day, everyday, is play numbers. At first she would get some of them back wards or forget the order a bit, but it didn't take long for her to become and expert typer. She hasn't figured out the space bar or the return key, she likes for me to sit next to her hour after hour while she types all the numbers from 1-100. We have to do it in black, and in red, and in blue, and in pink. She has finally figured out how to count correctly out loud from 1-100 no more thirteen-one, etc. But, my punishment for manipulating her to count correctly is all the hours I have had to sit next to her on the computer hitting that damn space bar. Hopefully today she will get the space bar concept. Maybe she is faking just so I will play with her?

When she is not on the computer she is counting out loud, she counts and counts. If something interrupts her counting, well we have to start again and again. No way am I telling her about 101, 102 etc.