15 month old finds holes everywhere

[YesThisTime]

DS spots holes everywhere and insists on inspecting them. Is this normal? He has learnt to say 'hole' so he points them out to me and can get quite excited about big ones (like drain holes). It seems an odd thing to be interested in and I've never seen any other toddlers with a passion for holes.

Is he getting on well in other aspects of development? If so, I wouldn't worry at all...buy him some holes of his own! Or make him some...with boxes...and put things inside for him to find.

Maybe he's going to be a PotHoler!

Here is a comment from another forum where people discuss their toddlers interests... copied and pasted.

*Oh

I thought of another one..

Holes

He is obsessed with holes of any sort everywhere we go - grates, fences with knot holes etc.

At home he stuff all the toys in any holes he can find. I recently opened a new Pampers box to find it full of the toys he had stuffed through the handle hole.

The Laundry basket is a big delight to shove stuff into.*

Thanks! Yes, I think he's doing ok - walking, talking (said his first two word sentence the other day when he informed
me that "dadda weewee" ) and is generally quite interactive. I guess you might be right and he is destined to be a potholer. Sounds a bit dangerous to me...

My son is obsessed with holes and gaps, too, and in particular in shoving things through any available hole or gap. I have found coins and other random stuff inside the cooker, down the back of radiators....I could go on.

DS seems quite interested in how things work, far more so than DD ever was at his age (nearly 2). I think it's just hte kind of mind he has :)

And then they find they have two holes that mummy can't take away from them when they stick their fingers in. So walk round with two fingers up their nose.

DeWe. He found my belly button the other day and now keeps trying to plunge things into it.

You might find it interesting to read about schemas - patterns to how children play. It sounds very much as if he's working on an enclosure schema at the moment.

Home-made posting toys are great fun for children like this. Pipe cleaners going through holes into a pot (just drill a few holes in) are good for fine motor skills, though he may be a bit young yet for this. Pipe cleaners into an upturned colander are good fun too.

DS loves our letterbox. Tissue boxes are great too, and I bet he'd be interested in the holes in kitchen roll / loo roll / wrapping paper tubes.

The Imagination Tree has some lovely ideas on it. You can probably find loads more if you google. Children work on different schemas for varying lengths of time, so it could pass quickly or go on for ages.

DS has never had a long hole obsession, but drains were very, very popular for quite a while at around 18 months or so. At 2.8 y.o. he still likes drainage holes in walls.

We also had the stuff down the back of the radiator phase, as well as under the fridge, under the washing machine etc.