Obsessed with opening and closing gates

[Vanishabenj]

Evening everyone

My little boy is obsessed with park gates 1 opening and closing them, he’ll happily do this for 20 minutes at a time rather than playing with the apparatus in the park. Whilst I encourage him to try out the slide, he just goes back to opening and closing the gate.

has anyone else experienced this?

They all do this.

Don't try and move them away, let them get bored with it on their own

Yes, it's standard.

Leave them to it as long as they're not causing an obstruction/at risk of shutting their fingers in the gate.

Thank you! Phew 😀 I thought he was the only one, well he’s the only one in our park!

For my DS, it was being obsessed with the wheels of buggies and trying to make them move rather than take part in the baby sensory class we were supposed to be there for 😂

I think it's called schematic play where they do the same thing over and over to test it out.

How old is he? Mine had the opening and closing phase… more doors than gates with him though.

Haha yes! I took my now 7yo to a new, expensive soft play when he was 2yo and all he did was stand at the gate, opening and closing it for the other kids running in and out! He looked like a bouncer 🤣 they are funny little things!

Yep. Every gate on the walk to and from nursery. It used to take a very long time to get anywhere. He grow out of it. Then there was the burglar alarm obsession phase 🤣

It's science! I love watching toddler science it's awesome as they explore, test, find the results, try something different, doesn't work, try it again, watch it do what they thought it would, rinse and repeat

Yep this is standard.

For my almost 2 year old it's putting stuff in the bin... Birthday parties, soft plays, the park... No matter where we are all he wants to do is pick up litter and find the nearest bin!

Kids are odd little things! My son loved doors too. He also really loved “graa ba ty” (gravity) and spent hours dropping things from a height.

2 year old ds did that too.

Went to the park but never went in the park. Spent 30 minutes with him opening and closing the gate and letting people in/out!

They get bored eventually. Think our record was 45 minutes before he saw an ant and we had to follow it ... for another 30 minutes

I found this website informative:
https://www.onehundredtoys.com/understanding-schema-play-in-toddlers/

Yep. I took my son to monkey music and he wasn't interested in sitting on my lap clapping hands, he wanted to run around the room and bang the fire escape bar.

Classic - opening and closing gates.

Little boys love it, they think it's the biz

He’s 25 months old - it’s both doors and gates, but mainly gates now especially when we go to the park. Gets a tiny bit awkward when other children are trying to come in and out!

They’re funny little creatures at that age. Mine used to only go on the swings and would insist on being on them for hours if we let him.
Then one day he decided he didn’t like them anymore and hasn’t been on one since.

With our youngest, it was steps. We lived at the top of a long road of Georgian houses with small flights of steps from the pavement to the front door. We had to allow a good half hour extra when we went into town so that he could walk up and down them all 😁