Help! Obssessed with cars..

[whoami]

My 3.5 year old son is obsessed with cars. Really, I could take away all his toys and he would be fine with a few matchbox cars. Cars are in the blood, and my df was the same way as a child. Everyone buys him cars, and oddly enough for his 2nd birthday all he received were cars. He drives them around, lines they up in creative ways, crashes them, etc.

Anyways, I found a roadsystem at tjmaxx that's very similar to the PlanToys Road System - but now I'm torn on whether to give it to him or not because I feel it will encourage more car play. He really loves cars and I don't necessarily want to tear him away from them, but I really wish he'd play with some of the other toys we have as well. He has trains, but won't play with them. I've tried to encourge him to build a road with blocks, but he's not interested. We're waldorf inspired so he has wood cars too, and a rainbow tunnel that he uses once in a blue moon, but he's most content with a few metal cars.

Anyone have ideas of what I can do to help broaden his play?

[LynnS6]

Give him time. Some kids get obsessions, some don't. Unless it's causing problems in that he has rituals around play or he won't play something else if cars aren't available, I wouldn't worry.

From age 2-4, ds was obsessed with garbage trucks. I have a picture of him near my hospital bed the day after dd was born, pretending it was a garbage truck. No matter what he was given, after a bit, it became a garbage truck.

From ages 4-5, it was fire trucks. For his 6th birthday, all he got were lego fire trucks.

From 5-7, it was buses. I can't tell you the number of buses we rode, the number of 'routes' he outlined.

From 8-9 we had a 'break' from obsessions. Now we're back to them and the current ones are: Penguins and Baseball. (Which are, of course, combined and the penguins play baseball in our living room. We have bases currently taped to the carpet. )

With each obsession, ds has played out things that interest, intrigue or scare him. I can't tell you the number of things that we've learned. For a while, ds knew every single bus line in the city. I swear his obsessions with buses taught him to read, because he would read the route signs. It also taught him a lot about geography. His current obsession with baseball (penguins are a sideline) is helping him explore issues about probability, statistics, fair play, popularity, performing under pressure, making mistakes and probably more that I simply haven't noticed yet.

[phathui5]

I wouldn't put an effort into broadening his play. You have other toys available, and if he wants to play with them, he will.

All of my children have gone through phases where they just want to play with one kind of thing or one type of pretend game. They're into it for a while and usually move on. When my 10yo ds was three and four years old, all he wanted to play with was Legos and trains. Now he plays with lots of things, but still loves Legos.

[zinemama]

It is the nature of toddlers to be obsessed with something or other.

I wouldn't get him any more cars, since it sounds like he has plenty and gets plenty from everyone else. But I wouldn't discourage him from playing with them or try to broaden his play. You have other stuff around. When he gets tired of cars, he'll play with it.

[KempsMama]

I wouldn't worry about it. DS1 is obsessed too, it wasn't until DH started showing him he could build garages for his cars that he started playing with blocks, and if it wasn't for the Toy Story movies, he wouldn't have started to care about anything else!

I echo the previous poster that it's normal.

[jeslynn]

My son is the same way. He probably has HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of them all over the place. He uses them to race, play like they talk like the Cars movie, make towers out of them, etc etc.

[ShadowMoon]

My almost 4 yr old is going through a matchbox car and airplane phase right now. I let him be. He will be obsessed with something new soon enough I just make sure not to acquire too many.

[whoami]

Help! Obssessed with cars..

Okie dokie, I'll let his car play be