I am not sure if it is a trait all little ones have or if it's just a 'Sid trait'. But even as a little baby, everything, every single little thing, especially that he enjoyed a lot, always became a routine, almost religious in its repetition and perfection. This means, an event, a game, a dialogue, anything that took place spontaneously one time and was enjoyed then, had to be played out like a scene, like purposefully creating, living, a déjà vu.
This one really is a little tough to explain in words here. You have to see how deliberate and thought out the 'silliness' is, to realize that things have ceased being silly really and are now a planned, enacted play, no matter how silly the actual routine looks like.
Let’s see. So one day, Sid and I are lying in the bed being silly and Sid is excessively giggly. He makes some weird sounding words which I repeat and ask "What?! What is that?" in a funny, confused tone and he bursts into a fit of giggles. He kept doing this for some time bursting into uncontrollable laughter every time I repeated the words and the question. This was months and months back. Then a few weeks back, when we were getting ready for bed, Sid suddenly remembered and repeated the same set of gibberish. When I didn't seem to get it at first, he actually repeated what should be my exact response verbatim, with the right words AND funny sounding tone. However, this time he quickly realized it was not very funny anymore (Big boy and all that) and moved on.
I had noticed this in Sid from very very early days. Every single thing he said, did, every action, every song and dance, every conversation session, every random act of play, everything in his life becomes a kind of set routine such that the next time he sings that song, reads that book, says some silly sentence or just decides to play some random game, he expects us to follow up with the exact same word/actions we did last time.
Another example is when Sid is getting into the car to go to school. He pauses and looks at the black rubber (washer?) parts that jut out at the open end of the door, examines them, asks me what they are and if he may pull them out. The first day I explained to him about the parts being there so as to close the door securely and that they definitely may not be pulled out. And from then, every single day he has paused before entering the car, looked carefully at those things and asked me the same question with a very knowing, naughty smile.
Another one is when we are about to leave the car to enter the school and I take his bag and water bottle. One day he asked me to take my bag as well so I could join him at school. I laughed and explained why that wasn't possible. Since then, every single day the same naughty, knowing, "Oh how much I love pulling your leg" look returns and he asks me to take my bag as well, while leaving.
There are a hundred other such examples that I can narrate here. Especially because of months and months of repetition, there is hardly any chance of my forgetting them. Similar are play routines. If one day he does some silly act and I say something and then he says something and it becomes a fun narrative, then every time after that he wants the same narrative to play out.
This makes me wonder.
I wonder if he even enjoys these games because they are games no more.
I wonder if he is having any fun doing them because they are not fun, spontaneous, silly and crazy things that they were the first time.
Why does he feel this need to play things out exactly as they were once? It is not “let's play and have fun" anymore because now it is "we have to make it exactly like the last time cos then we had lots of fun".
He does have loads of spontaneous fun with us when we initiate games and conversations. However, if he starts to do something, it is always deliberate and played out.
Wonder if it's a reflection of things to come. Hmmmmmm......
And they say women are hard to read. Whoever said that hasn't tried understanding the mechanics behind a child's mind, I'm sure.
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