To ask ds to choose a different book as I will GO MAD if I have to read another blardy Thomas related story?

[beansprout]

I just can't bear them and of course they are ds's favourite thing. They aren't even that nice, just a load of male egos competing and being unkind to each other plus they are too long and, and, I could go on.

I will read a few each day but always get to the point where I say, "can we read something else, something that isn't a train book, how about x, y and z?" I know I shouldn't dictate his reading choices but I am getting to the point where I just can't bear them!

AIBU?

No, no 4plus1, I disagree, it is hard to beat 'The tiger who came to tea'.

My lovely mother manage to find a book of thomas "songs" that plays tunes and has a microphone.

I blardy love the pictures beansprout. The DSs will be dropping off to sleep and I'll still be chuntering away: 'There's the farmer and his tractor, and there are the children on the bicycles, and there's the man with the green van...'

Conor - 65 per cent off if you order in the next 20 hours!

I especially love the one where Duffy's missus is holding his breakfast while Duffy runs off and is late AGAIN (he must have a damn good union) and ds asks, "mummy, why is Duffy's wife making his breakfast?".

My work here is done.

Connor my mother bought that one too. I find getting DS1 to read DS2 a story also gets me away from Thomas
We have literally hundreds of books and he still wants Thomas or Bob, he has recently discovered dinosaurs though and that is really testing my pronunciation.

We have a 26 book box set of the original Rev Awdry railway stories from the 40s and 50s.
Long and very boring, stuffy, clumsy language, tiny pictures. Most don't even include Thomas, James and Percy. Yet still, DS wants me to read them.

Ranting housewife - I think it's because I have been inundated with old books that are a bit too old for my DS and haven't had a proper sort out and they are all there on his shelves mixed in with his books. So long stories, few pictures etc - maybe she kept all of my good books and passed on the rubbish ones to me!

'he must have a damn good union' - LOL. He is a very, very hopeless train driver INDEED. It's like DP always says about the Fat Controller's railway - 'this railway is a death-trap!'

DS rather liked the little red train books. Beany is your DS 3 by any chance? This sounds rather like the behaviour of a 3yo IME.

rubberduck is it DS2 that has the Mr Man obsession? I am doubly fortunate in that my 3yo is a girl and so discovering Little Miss (a change at least) and also that she has decreed that we need to save them for when DH is reading. Who am I to argue> But I have to say that DS rather likes Mr Men for reading himself. Could you possibly persuade DS1 to read to DS2?

[note - all the last paragraph is subsequent to your little email of explanation IYSWIM ]

I remember telling ds that I would read him anything except Thomas, I had had enough of them and wasn't reading anymore that day. He was perfectly welcome to go and look at them himself of course.

Oh he's amazing. The races are one thing but when he crawls the length of the train (on the roof!) to get a lamp and then attach it to the front...! I also like Green Light where he makes his way around Europe as he has slavishly followed every green light on the track. Fab.

OMG the fat controller and the "you must do as you are told" side of it.
Argh I so hated those books and dd made me read them ad nauseum. I think Bob is marginally worse though, "muck is stuck" groan. I used to ask myself, why oh why my dd couldn't like princesses and fairies like everyone elses (although those books are probably just as awful)

I think just hide them until he can read them himself.

Bozza - spot on! Ds is 3.3!

LOL beany. DS (DD likes Thomas in a sort of little sister way but he doesn't quite compete with princesses and angelina ballerina) was 3.3 when DD was born and had a tough time. So, of couse, did all the rest of us. And one memory was reading a full set of Thomas books night after night before hopping off to breastfeed DD. I am jsut about over this 3 1/2 years later (DS is nearly 7 and DD is 3 1/2).

i currently have a boycott on thomas books. little red train gets my vote, but i am so pissed off with doing the 'chuff cuff chuffity chuff' bit i now miss it out luckily DS (aged 4)cannot yet read and is unaware that i am missing out the best bits.

read 'owl babies' today, that was lovely, he got the message straight away and reckoned that mummy owl was just out at work. however, let me make it clear i do not leave 3 little owlets at home alone at night while go out to work. i suppose it's allowed in the animal kingdom.

are now entering a dinosaur phase, and read DS a dino book a few nihts ago, unfotunately it was a non fictional one with rather graphic descriptions about how the T rex tears it's prey limb from limb crunching on the bones etc. was a bit worried it would give DS nightmares but had started so i finished. when i recounted this tale at work the next day i was advised that as DS cannot read i should have embellished it a bit and changed the narrative to something about dinosaurs having a lovely picnic tea and playing happily together. i told them the truth, that after a full days' work i was knackered and did not have the imagination at the time.

click clack clickety clack

clickety clickety.... clank

No way would DS1 have let me leave that bit out.

I am so sick of Thomas, DD is crazy about him and all the so-called "useful crew." We actually do more DVD-ing with him, which in a way is worse. You should hear it dubbed in an American accent (parents helpfully got one in over Christmas). Positively soporific, the endless droning.

Thomas seems soon to be outsted by the My Little Pony series - with Sparkleworks, Sunny Daze and co. They even go off to parties together and seemingly have too much punch. In the current fave book one of the pony's got so drunk unstable of hoof she knocked the bowl over with her backside.

mil bought dd a set of 20 dora the explorer books for xmas . they are dreadful. and of course she loves them. dp & i have a strict rule that we'll both read one a day & that's it, she's not having any more. we are more than happy to read her any of the hundreds of other books but no more sodding dora. arrrrgh.

Oh I agree I've really gone off TTTE too, how do people wiht 5 boys do it? (Get ds1 to read to ds4 and 5 I suppose ). My dm just inundates my house with TTTE stuff, despite my please not too. I'm just grabbing it and putting it to one side now to hand on to dn. I can't resist after SIL on seeing my house declared no TTTE for her ds

OMG Bozza - you paint a vision of hell!!! That will be the same age difference for us (db is arriving this week!). A whole set?!!!

Our house also looks like the Island of fecking Sodor following Christmas and a bunch of well meaning relatives. Awful.

I also come up with edited versions. Some of the language is ludicrously technical too. Peter Sam's Giesl funnel anyone?

Bozza: Yes, ds2 is 4 in May (we were in the same baby thread as each other... I just had a different name then). Ds1 does read to ds2 occasionally - but generally we split up and dh reads to one (or listens to ds1 read if he has a school book) and I read to the other.

At least ds1 gets interesting books home from school now...

HeadHeartorHormones: "We have a 26 book box set of the original Rev Awdry railway stories from the 40s and 50s. Long and very boring, stuffy, clumsy language, tiny pictures. "

Sacrilege! Burn the infidel!

The originals are far better than the complete crap put out today, which all seems to have pathetic, soppy, barely-discernible plots.

OK, so the original ones only have about three plots: (1) Engine misjudges trucks, has accident (2) Engine is pompous, has comeuppance (3) Engine struggles through adversity, but at least there are plots!

The definitive recorded versions are the ones Johnny Morris did in the 60's. The LP's and EP's coe up on eBay regularly...

We have the whole Thomas set too. Fortunately Ds1 is into Mr Men at the moment. Mind you, they get just as annoying as Thomas after a while. Especially Mr Nonsense which ds1 likes to read every single night.

Ds2 likes Wibbly Pig and Kipper. Much better.