7 year old apparently obsessed

[Pleasebequietnow]

DD is in Y2. She gets very interested in completely random things for a while and then move on to something else e.g. dinosaurs, Tudors, butterflies, cyclones (from watching Wizard of Oz).

It tends to be her main topic of conversation. She wants to play games involving her interests and constantly asks questions about it.

Today her teacher told me DD was obsessed with cyclones. He indicated that this was a problem and I should be worried. At night time she told me she was sad as her teacher banned her from talking about cyclones.

Is this normal 7 year old behaviour or should I be worried?

Ds y2 - 6 yo...obsessed by volcanoes, earthquakes, titanic, great fire of London...there are a few non disaster based interests but tbh I think he obsesses because he is trying to understand the bad in the world. He says it is because they worry him.

Or he is totally psycho 😂

Did he explain why he thought it was a problem. If you know what behaviour he thinks makes it a problem, hopefully you can see if you agree.

Mine have fixed interests, but don’t particularly obsess to the exclusion of other things, but I don’t think it really sounds like a problem unless it’s affecting her or others negatively.

At the same age, my boy had frequent obsessions with different things, often quite random.

I think headmaster was wrong to say that.

I'd say at that age it's fairly normal. I agree that it's them trying to make sense of things. It's all very well us as adults knowing about cyclones but when you first hear about them, they're a pretty scary thought. Kids will then talk about them loads & incorporate them into their games to find out how likely they are/how you could escape/how you could save your family etc etc.

Obviously not just cyclones but anything that they pick up on that's out of the ordinary, dangerous or interesting!

Mine was like that, he learned to modify his obsessions and has grown up well. It's not unusual at your son's age but will run its course.

I'm 50 and I'm still like that

DS7 In year 2 has a new obsession approximately every 2 months. We have had the Tudors, cyclones, volcanoes and earthquakes, giant squid, the Titanic, megalodons, alien abductions, man-eating catfish in the Seine in Paris, black holes, the Mariana Trench...

Lots of disasters/scary things now that you mention it!

His teacher loves it and gets him to do little projects and presentations to the class on his obsession of the day.

now googling man-eating catfish in Paris

Sounds just like my DS at a similar age. Actually me too....

DD 7 currently obsessed with warriors. Wants to dress like one, act like one, hair style, eating, talking. Every day 'will a warrior do this?'. A few months ago it was fairies.

Yeah I'm 33 and still like this. When I was little, my mum used to task me with doing 'projects' on all the things I was obsessed with. We still have all the little booklets I made, and there's one on tornadoes!

It can be perfectly normal, or it can be an indicator for adhd and/or asd.

DS has adhd and had lots of obsessions when he was younger. We still laugh about the holiday where his only topic of conversation was extinct animals. We tried to steer him towards endangered animals but that wasn't good enough . He had a dinosaur obsession too and he doesn't remember anything about them now. I, however, now have an encyclopaedic knowledge about dinosaurs.

These days it's mainly football but that's pretty normal for a 9yo.

It's good to have interests though.

I love these phases of things. Dd at 14 still has them at bit. When younger it was animals, Moshi monsters, my little pony, minecraft. Currently it’s Dr Who (although she does talk about other things too!) Not a worry at all.

Did the teacher mean that your ds talks about cyclones when they should be doing other stuff, or interrupts to talk about them? Because I don’t think the obsession itself is a bad thing. If he is talking about it all the time it shows he is passionate about it which is great, but could get on the way in classrooms. But if the teacher thinks it’s bad to have an obsession, I think he’s wrong, it’s normal.
I’ve always backed my kids obsessions, we’d be down the library getting out every book on tractors/ ancient Egyptians/ weather/ falcons to name but a few.

I drew the line at Thomas the bleedin tank engine though. I zoned out on many monologues on Thomas.

My 7yo DS is like this too. Was your DD maybe interrupting the class to ask questions about cyclones and that's why the teacher raised it as an issue?

The teacher is being ridiculous. This is VERY common with children your daughter's age. It's a normal part of development. I was like this, as were my children. They are very healthy, well-adjusted young adults now. My mum still has my old notebooks of my various obsessions! Sharks, rainbows, dinosaurs, unicorns, the list is endless.

If the obsessions regularly change I would not be concerned but if there's obsession combined with other warning signs he could be inferring asd potentially. Dd has asd and obsesses, she's older so it's musicians mostly but at 7 it was volcanoes

Better than pokémon. Which is 6YO DS current obsession.

Even my 4YO says 'I'm sick of pokémon mummy'

My 7 year old is the exact same. A little while ago it was weather systems. Right now it's sea creatures. It's ALL he talks about. I have had to ban him from talking about his "obsessed" subject for certain time periods, like "we will not be talking about weather systems and clouds over dinner". I can understand why the teacher banned her from talking about cyclones if she's shoehorning it into every class discussion or talking at her friends about it rather than talking with her friends about all topics. It is very trying and she may be disrupting other people and/or the class if she keeps trying to bring it up.

I thought the same as previous posters. It is absolutely normal for Y2 age to have obsessions. I can name several in my class. Ir would only be a problem if the child can't focus on other things... if the class is writing leaflets about healthy eating and your child writes about cyclones... or they have a class discussion about kindness and your child interrupts to talk about cyclones. (This sort of behaviour is also normal in Y2, but quite frustrating as you can imagine!)

I'd perhaps go back on Monday and ask to double check what the concern is... is it the interest itself, or not being able to switch off from it?

Our DS was the same at that age. No real problems but we were glad when he got over his snooker phase!

My son always had very keen interests. One of the main ones was Pokemon.

In infant school I had his teacher tell me that his handwriting was below standard.

That night I asked him to do some handwriting to prove the teacher wrong (as an incentive) and he sat down and wrote out the names of 150 Pokemon all perfectly neat and spelt correctly!

I think it’s a bit cruel to shut down a keen interest in something.

My son is 7, 8 next month and he is obsessed with world war 2.

That sounds totally normal. Primary schools even tend to teach the different topic every half term method - so 6 weeks of Vikings then 6 weeks of Animals of Africa then 6 weeks of History of Transport or whatever.
Your child will either
A : Move on to a different interest
or
B : Become a world famous expert on weather systems
Which ever is the one that happens is fine.

Children in my school are obsessed with Fortnight. I would love one of them to be obsessed with cyclone!
I suppose if she was writing it in every story and going on and on at inappropriate times it would be an issue but otherwise it's no big deal. My ds wrote about war in every essay from 7 to 14. Some teachers enjoyed it others hated it. He grew out of that although he still watches a lot of war movies at college.