Daddy Ting blogs! And yes, “it is so funny!” haha.
Before I go into the post proper, I think it is time to introduce my two sons for easy reference. My elder son is Oliver (or Ollie for short) and my younger son is Quentin (pronounced as Quen-ton and not Quen-tin).
Ok, about this post. Ollie’s pretend play is getting more and more funny and interesting. But before we get there, let me share a bit about him ollie using the word funny. “Funny” seems like his new favorite word for the moment. He would do something out of the blue and then we (me or my wife) look at him, he would say “why ollie (insert action)? This is sooooo funny!”. Or when he did something wrong, like spit water out on the floor, and we told him off, he would laugh it off and say, “it’s funny”. At that moment, it is quite funny (at least for the first few times) to see how he tries to diffuse the tension by saying that it is funny and hopefully get things back to normal.
Ok, back to pretend play. He started with pretending to be in the car and driving with me. He would ask me to sit down next to him on the floor and instruct me to start the car and put on the seat belt. He would also pretend to fasten his own seat belt, together with all the sound effects. He would say that we are going to the airport (which is his favorite place) and ask me to drive off. A few moments later, he would say that we have reached and pretend to unfasten the seat belt and leave the car.
Now, that’s quite normal right. then the pretend play got upgraded. one day I noticed that he was “wandering” around the house with his backpack, occasionally stopping and raising his hands to reach for something. He would then walk around the house before finding a nice corner to sit down. So one fine day, I asked him what he was doing standing there and raising his hands. He said “Ollie is taking the lift and taking the train”. So that’s what he has been pretending to do. He is pretending that he is on his way to take the train: wandering around means his journey to the train station; stopping and raising his hands means waiting for the lift and pressing the buttons; sitting down on a corner means him sitting down on the train! In ollie’s language “this is so funny!”
Can’t wait to see what other scenarios can he think of.
Latest scenario was a playing with an imaginary iPad. Cue swiping, holding a stylus and writing on the said iPad. Hahaha. Gotta love a kid with awesome imagination =)