Geography fixation in 6yo - foster or redirect?

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The fact that it's geography is not the issue. It's the fact that it's been going for 4 months now and he is retaining a lot of data! To date we've been very encouraging and provided him with various geography resouces. Interestingly, his favourite is my wife's secondary school world atlas which is about 30 years old.

Now we're tossing up giving him his very own atlas (which he dreams of) or giving him a book on a new topic.

What do you think we should do given the duration of this fixation?

My son has obsessions. He obsesses over money, business ideas, the computer ect..... I would encourage the obessions.

I also try to introduce new things, but I wouldn't get in the way for his obsession, because to do that would mean to move mountains, and really lets look at Bill Gates and his obsession.

I would encourage the things he knows about doing best and loves. Why not? It's not like he's out doing drugs or finding gang members to belong too ya know?

But this is only my opinion, so others may disagree.

Lainie

Why even consider redirecting? Geography is a very broad subject area. Heck, even if he only focuses on one thing about geography he could still have years of study material. Most colleges require geograpy majors to declare a specific study area because its too broad to obtain all important geography knowledge in the traditional 4 years of schooling. Not to mention if he keeps this fixation for the rest of his life there are some amazing jobs he could get from it.

agreed-- I think as long as he is learning more and more new things, let it go. The only time I discourage the obsessions is if they become part of a repetitive pattern (ex. wanting to read the same book over and over or watch the same movie 50 times...) The geography sounds benefiacial really

Kate

Actually I don't even stop the videos or the reading thats over and over. I feel our kids NEED this. It's like stimming. They need it, so why not give it?

My kids (both boys) echolalia with commercials, cartoons, movies, and such all the time. I ignore it as I know they need to do these things for there own comfort.

I don't ever stop stimming. I just let them do it.

Lainie

I think this kid rocks

When I was 6 years old in 1932 I had scarlet fever and had to stay in bed for about 6 weeks. One source of entertainment was a geography wheel given me by an older friend. The wheel lined up the (then) 48 states of the US with the capital of each along with the name of the largest town, their populations, main products, and the like. Without conscious effort I had soon learned all those data, and knowing them and learning more bare facts has been a source of great pleasure. Since those days I've expanded my knowledge of geography and have added other interests, of course. So from an ancient (officially undiagnosed) Aspie, I suggest: FULL POWER AHEAD TO HIM.

Geography - how cool! Definantly get him his own atlas!

My 7 year old has been obsessed with dinosaurs for 4 years now - and I've learned a lot from him in the process.

Occasionally he'll venture off to something else (aliens, pokemon, yugi-oh or dragons) but he always comes back to dinosaurs.

I would only ever try to redirect if he became obsessed with guns, violence or pornography!

Helen

Foster it!

Knowing where you are is a first step. They do not even teach it in schools anymore.

I am considering a move, first step is a county by county look at everything. It is not just roads, towns, population, but ground water, mining history, lead, murcury, uranium mining district? Soil types, vegetive cover, wildlife, temp, rainfall, annual cycle of the year, first trails, settlements, where towns were built, when, why, stage stop, rail support, and the population demographic change over the last fifty years.

Recent developments, the formation of the rocks over 500 million years, what happened, in what order, and when. Nice land, but it sits on a Pluton, and you could drill through granite for a mile, and not hit a drop of water. Or, the flood of 1903 was a hundred year flood, that killed many.

When I narrow it down I will get the geologic map of the county, a topographic map, soil survay, and logs of water resorces. Logs of oil and gas wells are with the state, and mining claims with the county.

Then comes people, income, education, history, means of livelyhood, cultural background.

I have to go through dozens of books just to gather the data on one place. It is a set, so why has it not been compiled? I have a 1950s atlas, pre Interstate, sububia, when hard roads were replacing rail. I am looking for a place that was bigger back then than now.

A lot of the western US was grassland, till overgrazed by cattle, and turned to brush, so sheep were run, the brush got taller, so they switched to goats, till the brush shaded out everything. Now useless for anything but deer, but if cleared and reseeded, would again be stable grassland.

Am I obsessive?

I used to love looking at Atlases as a small child and think the best thing here is get this child his own Atlas and maybe a turning globe of the world too. Sadly, I didn't keep up the interest in Geography and actually did quite poorly in Grade 8 Geography but I kept on with reading.

There's no need to redirect your child's fascination with geography. It's a nice topic to know. Buy him atlases, a globe, books about places around the world, geography-themed computer games, or anything else you think might be nice. Let him talk about it at home, up to a limit that you can tolerate. However, it's extremely important that you warn your child not to talk to his peers about geography, and if he does, he might be ostracized (harsh, but true). And even when someone his age asks "where is [place] located?", your son's answer can't be longer than one sentence. I've made that mistake back in the day, and ended up paying the price big time.

why on earth would you NOT help him persue his obsessions?

When I was little I was obsessed with maps, I was obsessed with computers and I was obsessed with video games, especially strategy games with large maps.

Know what I do now?

I am a software developer who writes mapping software for insurance risk analysis. My servers have approx 700 gigs of risk maps and a couple more gigs of street, zipcode, topography and city maps. I mess with maps and computer software every day... And I make a great living at it, 2x what my father makes, if that counts...

Oh and I don't hate my job (like 90% of the people I know) I love my job, it's as fulfilling or more fulfilling than my early Carto-obsession.

My childhood obsession was medical books. It was never discouraged. Now I'm going to be an RN.

Let him have his geography I can tell you from experience that it brings him great enjoyment.

I think that you should foster it.

We seem to be born to be something. Long before we know what is on the next block, we are working on uniteing fields of study that have never been related.

I was nine when I described a computer, in those days built with tubes, filling rooms, made from the latest, transistors, and how as solid state it would be small, fast, and not prone to blowing a tube every ten minutes. I was punished and told to shut up.

What I remember most about my childhood was being told to shut up. Then I was punished for not speaking, being withdrawn, eye contact would lead to being attacked, parenting was based on making me be like everyone else, all of them, all of the time, being me was forbidden. What would the neighbors say?

That was 1955, in 1963 I got my first job running an IBM, it was mechanical with punch cards, I explained that was all wrong, and got fired. People who are hired to work with computers are for labor, not to think about what they are doing, I was paid to fix it, chad clogs, not read the manual.

The operating manual that came with the machine was there so when they had to call an IBM repairman he would have the magic book. The social model was picking chads is just like picking cotton. The book said clean out chads before they clog the machine.

I did freelance repair, but kept having a problem getting paid, I could fix the machines, but I was only twenty, so what could I know? Because of my age they wanted to pay minium wage.

I switched to VWs, and made $1000 a day.

I had been a well dressed, well read, clean cut, young man, did my best, got nothing but a hard time.

I became filthy, grease covered, kept a large wrench near, and treated all people like dogs. It works.

Twenty years later I was back in tweeds, doing computer repair, and was told I had to do it for 1/4 the going rate, because I did not have a degree in it. They used FORTRAN, but just had a mechanical problem they could not figure out, mechanical=low status labor, low pay. Maniacal laffter filled the building as I walked out. They paid to have IBM fly in a crew. No one wants to pay to keep things running, and they want to cheat the person who comes when it is broken.

I did OK when Windows came out, I make house calls. A little geek speak, and they pay to avoid thinking.
None of them read the book that came with the machine.

I now publish books, fine art prints, never meet my customers, am a hermit, and hate humans.

Just two more parts and I will have the Tesla Death Ray working. The world will be a better place.

Help your children with their interests, it is their life yet to unfold, they are blooming flowers, and you do not know the future they were born for. Before Universities, before this short recent time, a few people with early and intense interests built this world you live in. Read about them, they started as children, there was no one to teach them but themselves, and they defined the Laws of Science we live with.

They also had most of the traits now called Aspie. Some were burned at the stake, but some made it through. Tesla invented the logic gate, electronic computer, sixty cycle current, and the concept of an Internet, in 1903, Patented them all. He credited his early education to watching water flow around rocks in a creek, everything else was details.

As a child I was punished for building structures in a creek, adjusting the current flow, creating patterns of energy transferance. Whenever anything caught my attention, it was forbidden, and I was punished. The Death Ray is not in what it emits, but in the convergance of energy it triggers. The technology could power the world by scavenging random charges and recycling them, or it could stall out heart motors, for five minutes. Adult humans have a distinctive pattern, it would not affect children, butterflies or humming birds, it is species adult specific.

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