More recently he's started organising. I watch him playing with his toys and grouping them in various ways. Sometimes he puts all the vehicles together, sometimes he loads all the human characters into the back of a truck, sometimes he puts his soft toys in one pile and his plastic toys in another pile.
Another thing he does is "return" objects to their "correct" location, and I do need the inverted commas. Sometimes I decide to move items around the house and when Jude discovers them in their new location he moves them back to their old home, like the cushion I took from the living room and put on our bed that found its way back to the living room, or the umbrella I took from the hat stand and put in my handbag that was later found back at the hat stand.
He is often more interested in stacking his stackable crayons than drawing with them and wants to line up his non-stackable crayons neatly side-by-side.
There's a small voice in the back of my mind that keeps wondering if this is slightly Autistic behaviour, but Jude is so affectionate and engaged in everything that I have to shake such thoughts from my mind.
I just found this on Wikipedia that is quite interesting:
In the psychology of Freud, the anal stage is said to follow the oral stage of infant/early-childhood development. This is a time when an infant's attention moves from oral stimulation to anal stimulation (usually the bowels but occasionally the bladder), usually synchronous with learning to control their excretory functions, a time of toilet training. Freud theorized that children who experience conflicts during this period of time may develop "anal" personality traits, namely those associated with a child's efforts at excretory control: orderliness, stubbornness, a compulsion for control, as well as a generalized interest in collecting, possessing, and retaining objects.
Freud has been largely (wholly?) debunked by the psycho-analytical community, but Jude did suffer recently with his burns so I have to wonder if this behaviour is in some way related to his desire to control his world.
Is his behaviour completely normal or should I be concerned?
3 comments:
I can't really say whether it's something to be concerned about or not. It could be that Jude is trying to control his environment, perhaps it is a sign of slight autism or maybe it's just Jude learning about the world and how things have places and order. Sorry that probably isn't very helpful. Maybe talk to your GP about it?
If he was less loving and engaged in life I would be very concerned, but I'll continue to watch his development and keep it in the back of my mind. I don't think there's anything wrong, but it is interesting behaviour. Then again, he might just have learned it from me given how pedantic I can be.
I was thinking about this comment of yours again because I noticed that Maya also has some behaviours I find interesting (or odd). For instance, she can't stand having fluff or dirt on her hands and always wants me to get rid of it if there's any on her hands. Not sure where she got that from? Because I encourage her to explore and don't mind if she gets dirty in the process. Maybe these behaviours are just a sign of them learning about their world? Like maybe Maya once got some fluff or dirt in her mouth and found it unpleasant, so now always wants it removed before it ends up back in her mouth.
Wouldn't it be great if they could just explain it all to us? :)
Post a Comment