Then you need to start watching American Horror Story on FX. It debuted on Oct 5th, so catch the second episode tomorrow night, Oct 12. It stars recognizable-faced Dylan McDermott, Vera Farmiga's little sister, the fabulous Ms. Jessica Lange, and one of my personal favorite character actors in the history of ever, Mr. Denis O'Hare (aka Russell Edgington from True Blood).
The premise? A therapist's family getting over some late-term miscarriage and infidelity trauma moves into a haunted house in L.A., and of course all hell breaks loose!
Don't say I didn't warn you - it's SCEERY!
In other news, I take DD to an organized playgroup one morning a week. It is so precious to hear her call her new little playmates by name, and ask for them repeatedly after we go home. I love how she adorably mispronounces some of their names.
DS is apparently obsessed with play dough at Montessori. So much so that his teacher approached me to talk about how we might encourage him to branch out into trying some of the other works available to him at school. I replaced all of the off-brand play doh we'd been using at home (which DS told his teacher was too hard,) and that he liked the softer dough at school better. Then we encouraged DS to play with the new dough all weekend, which he did, happily. We'll see if this helps him get over his obsession, or whether it just continues to feed it. His explanation? "I just really love it."
Makes perfect sense to me.
9 comments:
I'm surprised they would mention they want him to do something else. It's not like it's been six months of nothing but play dough and even then, shrug. If you can't follow your bliss at 4 and in montessori, when can you? I'm glad he has soft play dough at home now, too! :)
Fwiw, Tate plays with dinosaurs at home and at school. One of the selling points for both of us was that they had dinosaurs there.
I hope the morning play group helps somehow with the childcare situation with DD and if not I hope the situation resolves itself, soon!
We are currently on year 2 of dinosaur obsession and there really does not seem to be an end in sight. So I say, if you can't beat them join them. I don't even bother suggesting we play guessing games about living animals, nor do I bother encouraging DS to draw something other than a T-Rex mum lovingly nestling up to her spawn. Even when I do mention Mama dinosaur was probably more likely to gobble them up than cuddle up with them, DS couldn't give a hoot.
I think kids just obsess. We have been thru the obsession with trains planes and space shuttles and they seemed to last an eternity until some point when he moved on to the next one. One day it will be something less interesting ( cos frankly, I love dinosaurs)like hotted up cars, football or formula 1.
I have such fond memories of our play group. We're still in touch with two of the families and try to get the kids together a few times a year, even though we all live in separate towns now. It's amazing how quickly they all fall back in together.
I'm with the other commenters - seems like Montessori preschool is the place to indulge an obsession with play dough. My almost 10 year old has been obsessed by dragons and cheetahs for years and shows no sign of changing any time soon. I think it's pretty typical and you shouldn't worry about it at all.
I wish I could see a series of horror, with a haunted house and everything!
But I did just discover real old-timey style production radio stories (acting, sound effects), and now am listening to this http://www.zombiepodcast.com/The_Zombie_Podcast/WereAliveEpisodes.html
and it freaking rocks.
As Marie Antoinette would say, "let him play with playdough!" I see nothing wrong with an obsession like that.
That one sounds too scary for me... I gave up horror movies in my 20's. Something about getting older and starting a family made me totally incapable of handling any extra frightful anxiety, fictional or not...
About the play dough, I will chime in with the others. Really? Why do we always have to find something wrong with our children?
@Blue, you absolutely nailed it. Why do we always have to find something wrong with our kids?
I just read about a mom whose 5 year 3 month old son was told his handwriting was sloppy. She showed the handwriting, and it was extraordinarily neat. I am infuriated that he was so narrowly judged, that the "teacher" was criticizing at all, rather than praising effort, and that kids are being required to write, let alone neat as machine-produced print, at 5 years old. Just infuriated.
When all of my commenters agree unanimously, that ought to tell you something! Let him have his play dough at school. Amen. This is the time and the place for his dough obsession.
Here's what I think is actually happening. I think I may have contributed to this whole premise that just playing with the dough is not enough after I once mentioned to the teacher that DS also enjoys playing with letters and puzzles. I think the teacher may have heard that as an expression of displeasure with the status quo, although it wasn't because at that point I had no idea how often DS was choosing one work over the others.
His teacher adores DS and I believe his intentions are good. This is his first year having his very own Montessori school, and I think he has rather lofty goals. And he is still probably still learning a lot himself, trying to strike the appropriate balances, and find his voice. We'll have a conference in a few weeks and I'll be able to sit down with him and let him know that I'm cool with the play dough obsession. In my head I'll be thinking 'and so are like 5 of my best friends on the internets, dammit!!'
I think the obsession is really endearing. nothing absolutely nothing remotely wrong with it. It just helps him express his imagination the best way, for right now.
I really think the kids should be the ones to show us were their strengths/interests are.
I think it's neat that you learned what his playdoh preference is from this experience!
I'm sure his obsessions will change to something else soon enough, and then you'll hear how all he wants to play with are puzzles. ;-)
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