Before I had children I had heard how they have their little obsessions and I was prepared for Thomas the Tank Engine, buses or cars (or whatever) to be played with morning till night. My son had other ideas for his first obsession. Doctor Who. Yep, really. There are those who don’t really believe that my son hasn’t been encouraged heavily in this direction (something about me thinking David Tennant is totally scrummy…I’m saying nothing!), but he really hasn’t. And I’m sure he can’t be the only child with an unusual obsession.
How did this happen? I’ve quite often had the TV on while feeding Twink, with reruns of Buffy, Ghost Whisperer, Charmed, Friends…and Doctor Who. I do love Doctor Who, but I am also a HUGE Buffy fan. Hubby always has car programmes on – Top Gear, Fifth Gear & lots of random Discovery channel type shows. Despite this huge selection of inappropriate, non-cbeebies TV programmes…my son chose Doctor Who. The first we knew of it was when he suddenly got terribly excited when the credits ran; pointing at the TV screen and doing a little dance of joy!
Then he found my Doctor Who Annual. I’m not really an annual type of person, but for Twink’s first christmas, he bought me a Doctor Who Annual (& Hubby a Top Gear annual…clever boy!). This annual became his new best friend. He’d sit down to flick through it’s pages, pointing out all the characters. It started being the book he chose to cuddle to sleep (chosen from a huge stack that had to accompany him to bed).
- The bedtime book stack
Next he started to ask us to put Doctor Who on TV. We should probably have put a stop to it at this point, but I much prefer watching Doctor Who to Cbeebies, and as I have a 3 month who needs feeding quite often, it’s useful to have something to keep Twink occupied if he’s in a bit of a grump. He doesn’t actually watch the whole episode unless it’s a new one – he just potters around the living room and gets excited when he sees the blue box, a dalek or the credit sequence.
I’m really impressed with the brand recognition abilities of a two year old. He can spot the Doctor Who logo on a single book sitting high up on a bookshelf with hundreds of other books on it. No matter what anyone else thinks, Twink loves Doctor Who.
So we’ve gone with it. Â For his birthday we bought him a book of Doctor Who stories we can read to him, a dalek filled with bubble bath (as someone who was scared of daleks as a child, that seems a little soft and fluffy for a dalek!) and some Doctor Who sheets for his bed. A genius friend also bought him a sonic screwdriver! The screwdriver is taken everywhere, and every conceivable object is sonicked. His reaction to seeing the Doctor Who sheets on his bed? Well, obviously he whipped out his sonic screwdriver and zapped them!
- That’s right…he’s giving a dalek a quick cuddle…
Obviously there was also a tardis cake
…it’s disappearing…that’s what tardises do!
Twink has previously not slept under a blanket since he moved out of our bed at 11 months. Thanks to the Doctor Who sheets he now insists on sleeping underneath his covers. And since he’s been sleeping under them he’s slept at least 12 hours a night…in fact we’ve had to wake him for nursery. The one morning we could let him sleep in, he slept for 13 & a half hours. No, he’s not ill! I am LOVING the extra sleep. Obviously it will only last until I get used to it, but until then I am going to enjoy every minute!
What will he do next? Is this obsession here to stay? Probably not, but until then he’s busy playing at being the 12th Doctor!
So cute! Does he watch the new ones? We’ve been a but wary of lettling DS watch them because even I get scared!
He actually sits on the sofa & watches the new ones with us. It’s the longest he sits still all week! He doesn’t seem at all fazed by the Doctor changing & he’s not scared by any of it. If he was I’d have to stop him watching them…at the moment he just finds it all very funny!