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Your obsessions when you were a child? (Or your child's obsessions?)

A

aspiemommy

Well-Known Member
My son (Josh) is nearly 3 and he is obsessed with cars. Especially their wheels. Also, he has a new found obsession for scrabble (the game) !! He loves letters... He can spend hours sitting in the living room ''playing'' scrabble. He puts the letters of the alphabet in order, or put letters to spell his name... Mixes them up and then start again. Or he will read the letters to me out loud. I find it quite interesting!

What were your obsessions ?? xx
 
When I was a child my main (and still my most intense obsession overall) was construction vehicles.
 
. Geography. I used to love staring at the globe and memorizing the locations and names of the various countries of the world.

. Synthesizers. They're the first instrument I was interested in. I used to want to stay home from school to tinker with one. I hesistated to listen to my teachers and would scream at them. My teachers couldn't handle me and I no longer had to show up . . . which I was totally fine with. :D

. Astronomy, sci-fi and any books/shows dealing with UFOs and abductions. From the time was about seven or eight until I was twelve or so, I'd get books about aliens and alien abductions every two or three weeks. I was so interested and engrossed in books on this topic that I'd often read them cover to cover while being totally unaware of my surroundings. In the span of four years, I likely read close to fifty books on aliens/UFOs.

. RPGs (and video-games in general, really). I got into the Final Fantasy series at age six. Mystic Quest is the first game in the series I played; shortly after, I played Final Fantasy VI (II in North America) which is long before the series became mainstream. I've loved RPGs ever since.

. Cycling. When I wasn't playing video-games, I was usually biking around town with my friends. It wasn't rare for me to be out on my bike for 10+ hours a day on weekends.

. Computers. I became obsessed with computers after I received this old computer with Windows 3.11 on it. I learned practically every DOS command before I was ten. All I mostly did on the computer was play games, especially Sierra games from the 80s such as Police Quest. I also had a Commodore 64 before receiving the computer with Windows 3.11 on it, but I didn't use it because it never came with a power cord.

. Music. Still something I'm very fond of. I was obsessed with Elvis and Michael Jackson when I was six and seven. When I got older, I started listening to Oasis, Green Day . . . and even the Backstreet Boys for a while. My musical tastes have changed a lot, but I still listen to all of those aforementioned bands/artists (minus the Backstreet Boys) from time to time. :D
 
Mine had to be music.

I can remember riding in the front seat when I was around 5 or 6 and listening to classic rock with my Dad and telling him I could understand the progressions in the songs and knew which part would come next (verse, chorus, bridge). He taught me how to play air guitar (still one of my most vivid memories from that age) and then I got a hold of an old cassette player and began listening to whatever my brother had laying around. After that it was only a matter of time before I could start getting my hands on my brothers stereo when he would be out of the house and would jump around and rock out for as long as I could.

A year or two later, my cousin joined the Air Force and let my brother borrow his bass guitar. I only watched my brother pick around on it a couple of times but memorized what he was playing and blew away him and his friends a little while later when I picked it up in front of them and started playing the riff he'd been trying to learn.
 
My earliest obsessions were dinosaurs and the Beetlejuice cartoon. I don't remember much about this time in my life.

When I was in kindergarten I became obsessed with the movie Balto, which led to an obsession with wolves, since the main character was a (half-breed) wolf. Out of all my TV show/movie obsessions, Balto lasted the longest, because even when it wasn't a main obsession, it was still in the background.

At age 8, I developed an obsession with Pokemon. I watched the anime up through the Johto arc, but I was much more interested in playing the games. I've played every generation of games, but I've only completed the 1st.

Age 8 is also when I developed an obsession with anime and everything else having to do with Japan. That was my strongest and longest-lasting obsession to date, because it lasted until I was 18, a full decade, which at this point is half my life. Individual anime series I obsessed over included, in order: Pokemon, Digimon, Hamtaro, Rurouni Kenshin, Inuyasha, Naruto, One Piece, Trinity Blood and Hellsing.
 
My son is really into cars as well. When he was 3 years old he could name just about any car he saw on the road. He is nearly 6 now and he is still really obsessive about cars, particularly interested in TV shows about cars and about car crashes. He also likes trucks, trains and airplanes. He knows how to get onto youtube and he can spend hours watching clips about monster trucks or airplane crashes.

But he gets really upset if we are watching a movie or TV show where he can see people get hurt. He really didn't like "The Karate Kid".

He also really likes dogs - he nearly got bitten by a stray dog that he tried to pat on Kuta Beach in Bali when he was not yet 2 years old. He has always had a grubby stuffed dog that he carries around everywhere with him, and holding the puppy up to his face and taking a deep breath through his nose seems to calm him.

His favourite show is Mythbusters, and he also loves any documentary that shows how things are made. He also loves air crash investigation and Road Rampage (about crazy drivers and car crashes).
 
For me they wouldn't count as obsessions, but:

I remember being very interested in dinosaurs. I had one of those books with labeled pictures of model dinosaurs, both whole and partial so that you could see what their innards and bones looked like too. I spent a lot of time paging through that book. I also remember creating a made-up world inhabited entirely by Velociraptors. I had watched Jurassic Park and it scared the living daylights out of me, but I was still fascinated by those dinosaurs. I drew pictures of them and imagined what their world would be like.

I got very interested in dragons. I gathered literature on different kinds of dragons while also making up some of my own kinds. I thought about how they would develop and live their lives, made stories about them, and drew lots of pictures of them.

I also got very interested in Pokemon, but my interest was mostly limited to trading cards and stickers because we weren't allowed to have video games in my family and we didn't watch much TV. I liked to draw the Pokemon a lot, and they were one of the main influences on my drawing style. One summer I was really bored, and I taped four pieces of paper together and drew every one of the first 152 Pokemon on it, standing in ranks, along with the main characters from the TV show. I'm still amazed I actually finished it.

The upshot: I like animals. I still am amazed it took me so long to realize this.
 
I actually forgot that dinosaurs were also one of my primary obsessions for a short period of time.
 
Too many:

Bodily functions
Blowing noses
"Heigh Ho"
Winnie the Pooh
The Little Mermaid
Barbies
Home Alone
Jurassic Park
Dinosaurs
London
101 Dalmatians
Dalmatians
Alice in Wonderland (Disney version)
Cats
Weather
"Normal"

And I have a few I will not list because too embarrassing. I am sure all of you can tell, I had weird obsessions.

All before my teens
 
Quintin , age 4 is obsessed with letters & numbers especially 'W'
He sings the 'abc' song both forward & backwards fast. He also spends most of his day with letters & numbers. So smart
 
I had two major obsessions as a child...

a) Horse-racing. I think I was around 9 when I started to have an interest in horse racing. It was also around the time when I started seriously reading the newspaper, because I saw my parents engage in that activity and I was wondering what the fuss was about. So, I started flipping through the horse racing section of the newspaper, which is located at the back of the sports section. My parents owned a fish and chips shop and two doors down was a deli, and the owner of the deli were friends with my parents and would give me the horse racing liftout every Friday. He would also talk about horse racing with me because he had an interest as well.

So, I'd basically spend all my spare time thinking about horse racing, watching the races on the TV, analysing the guide form and tipping, pouring over the results in the Sunday paper, etc. I would also go down to the local library and borrow books and videos about horse racing, and also about horses in general. There were some horses that I liked and would closely follow, and I would memorise their track record, breeding, owner, usual jockey, trainer, etc. I also knew the layouts of all the main Australian racetracks, and I had a fantasy racetrack with fantasy horses. I had notepads of fantasy horses, plus a fantasy racing calendar.

I was looking back through my written journals [I've kept them all] and it was funny to read in my first journal, I was writing about when <x> race was, who won it, what was their time, and then I'll talk about the rest of my day.

b) A certain Hong Kong actor. I think I was a little younger when I found out about him - maybe 8 - and I would insist on borrowing any movie with him in it. Didn't matter if he was a star or if he had a 30-second cameo - if he was in it, I needed to see it. Then, when I was home alone, I would grab the videos [yes, they were video cassettes] and would watch and re-watch scenes he was in. I'd pause, slow-mo, memorise his gestures, memorise his dialogue, memorise his facial expressions, and I would do that for hours on end.

My fascination with him lasted quite a while. I had a ball looking information up when I got online in '96, and once Google came, I had even more fun.

I also had an interest in dinosaurs, but I'm not entirely sure if that would be classified as a special interest. According to my mum though, she always remembered me talking constantly about dinosaurs. I remember there was one time when I was in grade 1 and I did a little self-project on a particular dinosaur and gave it to my teacher - it wasn't part of any official assignment, I just thought that she should know about this certain dinosaur. She gave it back to me and had the whole class give me a round of applause :p
 
Hm... I don't really remember. :-/ I liked cartoons and Lego. Barbies were all right too. So were stuffed animals, although I don't remember nor do I recall my true obsession as a child. :S During my teens it was anime and such. :)
 
Not only does Quintin love W, he loves going on YouTube and finding any Alphabet song he can. He loves the Alphabet so much that he even started learning the Sweedish alphabet because it was on YouTube:)
 
Obsessions as a child: animals, fire, patches (*Merit badges, I was a boy scout), Star Wars, rain.
 
IdahoRose said:
My earliest obsessions were dinosaurs and the Beetlejuice cartoon. I don't remember much about this time in my life.

When I was in kindergarten I became obsessed with the movie Balto, which led to an obsession with wolves, since the main character was a (half-breed) wolf. Out of all my TV show/movie obsessions, Balto lasted the longest, because even when it wasn't a main obsession, it was still in the background.

At age 8, I developed an obsession with Pokemon. I watched the anime up through the Johto arc, but I was much more interested in playing the games. I've played every generation of games, but I've only completed the 1st.

Age 8 is also when I developed an obsession with anime and everything else having to do with Japan. That was my strongest and longest-lasting obsession to date, because it lasted until I was 18, a full decade, which at this point is half my life. Individual anime series I obsessed over included, in order: Pokemon, Digimon, Hamtaro, Rurouni Kenshin, Inuyasha, Naruto, One Piece, Trinity Blood and Hellsing.
Click to expand...

One of my obsessions, still: Japan.
 
Animals. Totally animals. I had an animal book when I was little that I remember wearing the hell out of. The paperback cover damn near fell off and had to be taped up.
 
Space exploration -- (which actually still is one of my obsessions).....if a Space Shuttle launch didn't go off exactly as scheduled, I used to throw serious temper tantrums until I understood the safety procedures better. But I read anything to do with space exploration, and it actually paid off when the shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986 (my freshman year in high school) -- I was approached to do an article about the accident for the yearbook, and then wound up giving presentations (using a plastic model I'd built) to all my classmates about the causes of the accident.
 
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