Why You Should Encourage Your Child’s Very Specific Obsession
My friend Karen says her son Christopher got into garbage trucks when he was about 18 months old. He went crazy whenever he saw him. Karen tried to turn his attention to toy trains since they were in the house, but he didn’t have that. Garbage trucks. That’s all.
And Karen went with it. On Monday morning, they heard the familiar rumble and walked away — she strapped Christopher into his car seat, turned on the engine, and followed a gleaming green truck labeled Waste Management. The toddler handed out muesli bars and water bottles to the drivers and watched them work (“They were celebrities for him,” says Karen). All day he talked about garbage trucks, drew garbage trucks and watched videos about garbage trucks (“He learned all the different types,” says Karen. “There are front loaders, side loaders, rear loaders”). Christopher had a garbage truck cake on his birthday. For Halloween, he dressed like a garbage truck. For Christmas, he got new shirts and pajamas with garbage trucks. Karen stops there. “I know it sounds so crazy,” she says.
In fact, this is not the case. Children have very specific obsessions that scientists call “intense interests.” Keith Morgan writes about this phenomenon in the New York Magazine article “A Psychological Explanation of Children’s Love for Dinosaurs, ” citing the fact that almost a third of all children suffer from this obsession at some point, usually between the ages of 2 and 6. More than fleeting childhood thrills such as chocolate ice cream for dessert, these passions occur without parental support, persist over a relatively long period of time (i.e., through childhood), and are pursued with zeal, often to some degree. where people outside of mom and dad are starting to take notice. Topics of interest can range from garbage trucks and excavators to this New Orleans-based personal injury lawyer . Boys have more serious interests than girls, according to a Yale University study .
And that’s great, experts say. Mastering one subject builds self-confidence, and Morgan found that it has other intellectual benefits as well. She writes:
A 2008 study found that sustained intense interests, particularly in conceptual areas like dinosaurs, can help children develop increased knowledge and tenacity, better concentration, and deeper information processing skills. In short, they make students better and smarter. Decades of research support this, with three separate studies showing that older children with intense interests tend to be above average intelligence.
Parents should do their best to keep their child interested, even if it is not their own cup of tea. One mom who participated in the Yale University study told researchers that her 5-year-old daughter was “extremely curious about bodies and injuries,” and so she sometimes, reluctantly, agreed to stop the car so they could investigate a murder on the road. (She supports this mother.) Aside from bloody animals, it is a great joy to lose yourself in passion, and parents can show their children from the very beginning that there is always something to learn.
Obsessions often go away over time, and it can be bittersweet. In a Yale University study, when the researchers observed the parents, they reported that the interest lasted from six months to three years. As they grow up, children develop other interests, and the nature of the school does not allow them to focus on only one subject.
But Christopher is now six and still wants to be a scavenger when he grows up. This is an NBA player. But he can’t do both on the same day, because, he says, “they might think I’m too smelly.”