Perseverating on Penguins
July 13, 2009 by Jill Cornfield
Filed under Health
When I first came across the notion of perseveration, I thought it was questionable. I mean, so someone stays locked on a subject or activity. What’s wrong with that? Shows they’re able to focus.
Yesterday Alex spent the entire day asking, Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin? Penguin?
Photo courtesy of BotheredByBees (flickr.com)
You get the idea. Thank god for ctrl + copy so I didn’t have to type the word “penguin” as often as he said it.
Alex has a collection of toy jungle animals and some sea birds. Perhaps because we went to the Central Park Zoo last weekend and visited the Penguin House there, he started to really want a penguin.
This was easily solved with a trip to FAO Schwarz. A great thing about New York City is the number of toy stores. I honestly think you are never more than a 15-minute walk from a pretty good toy store in most parts of town.
Alex was happy delighted with the penguin. And we were relieved overjoyed not to have to hear him ask Penguin? nonstop.
We’ve had similar Penguin issues at the zoo a couple of times. Transitioning from penguins to anything else was a problem. We didn’t seem to have this problem with other animals.
Has he seen Happy Feet movie?
One of our sons had a penguin fixation for more than a year! He’s moved on now, although he can sing the Pingu theme for hours at a time.
My 5 year old grandson Aiden has been saying “rocket-ship bubble gum” for probably about a year now. He will sometimes go days without saying it, and he will get fixated on something else, but he always comes back to rocket-ship bubblegum. We think he must have seen a bubblegum machine somewhere that was shaped like a rocket ship.
maybe b/c they’re black & white? does he like pandas too?
We didn’t take him to the Happy Feet movie – maybe we’ll rent it now. He never seemed that excited about penguins before and now that he has the penguin figure it all seems to have calmed down.
My younger son loved Pingu! Maybe we’ll look for that tape again for Alex.
I think that’s a complex phrase! He obviously has a great memory for language and what he saw!
I think he likes penguins. Because he saw them in the zoo.