My kids have always had a problem of badgering us for toys. First it was Thomas the train, then it was Star Wars, and then Pokémon, sea creatures, dinosaurs for a brief spell, and now star-wars or superhero-themed legos. Initially we succumbed to their badgering, mostly because we were relatively inexperienced parents with still ample shelf space then, not knowing how quickly kids fall out of love with certain toys. Anyway it soon resulted in an overflow of seemingly similar toys with very slight differences only my oldest high-D high C (DISC test) can tell. A typical conversation goes like this:
Hao En: Mummy mummy! I show you! I want to buy this lego x-wing micro fighter (waving a handphone he inevitably swiped from me or my hubby in front of me)
Me: Huh? But you already have an x-wing lego! Your papa bought you one, remember?
Hao En: Nooo... this one is different. The laser cannons are a circle! See see?
Me: (peering at the screen, seeing something that looks exactly like this $35 toy lego we bought him ) It looks the same to me! What are you talking about (going back to what I was doing)
Hao En: No! It's the laser cannons! Mine is half a circle! It's not like the real one! The real one is a round cannon!
Me: (looking again really closely) Oh... Aiya very close to what you have already, I'm not buying you another one.
Hao En: But the real X-wing is like this! I want the real X-wing! It has the circle laser cannon!
Me: What circle laser cannon? Show me.
(He immediately runs to a toy box he has and brings it)
Hao En: See (jabbing his finger at the picture of an X-wing shooting at the enemy. The cannons are indeed round)
Me: Oh... I see... ok (grudgingly and also secretly impressed that he was actually correct and could tell such minute details). Aiya it's the same la (with less conviction).
Hao En: It's not the same! The real one is round! I want a round cannon!
Me: How much is it?
Hao En: It's not the same! The real one is round! I want a round cannon!
Me: How much is it?
His OCD nature extends beyond the shape of the cannons, but even to lines found on the body and wings. He can tell when one out of the 4 cannons is missing (even for his tiny metal X-wing - yes he has many versions of X-wings), when the red line has faded, when one has a certain line and another doesn't. This led to him applying liquid paper and red markers to his big automated $200 X-Wing until it was virtually unrecognisable.
Anyway, over time, we wisened up and ended up only buying toys that they can use in many ways or they can use outdoors, such as lego, colour pencils and kiddie bicycles. We were also running out of shelf space at that point.
Recently, they got it into their heads to build a "house" which comprised any small space surrounded on all sides (including the top) by pillows and blankets. Each made their own house using the multitude of pillows and blankets of all sizes we had somehow accumulated as the household expanded. Sometimes they used the cot, sometimes just on the mattress on the floor. Then after building their own, they fought to enter it and to prevent it from falling down. Tears and fights will ensue as someone inevitably gets left out as the house is too small, and/or parts of the house start falling over, leading to adult intervention. Initially I tried helping them repair their houses, and then helping them build bigger or sturdier houses ("see? Mummy is an engineer. I fix problems"). Later, I gave up and left them to sort it out themselves. But what it meant was that they could sometimes be left for hours in the bedroom with the aircon on, playing "house" and being totally occupied. There was negotiating, whining, gloating, and physical pushing and kicking. Some kids fell off the bed a few times.
Recently my dad told me he wanted to buy a small tent for the kids to play house in, so he would no longer have to build any houses for them. I immediately told him it was a bad idea, because I had visited a friend's house during his children's birthday party, and they happened to have a big IKEA children's tent in the living room. However after excitedly crawling in and sitting in there, and inviting my kid to come in too, we quickly realised there was not much to do in the tent, and we crawled out. Somehow, the fact that the tent was so nice and sturdy robbed us of the creativity and mental and physical effort of building something and then yes, realising it has its limitations and trying to repair it.
