Obsession Boy

“We are going to be so rich!” Jaxon announced to us in Sacrament meeting today. “Why?” “Because we are going to have language school and teach all these languages and that is a lot of money!” Jaxon had just returned from going to the bathroom and was carrying a flyer. It showed all the languages that the Ensign and Friend magazines came in and how much a subscription to those magazines cost. There was a list of about 50 languages with amounts like $7.00 and $9.00 next to them. “We can make like… $30,000 dollars, are you excited?” I am looking confused in his direction. “What are you talking about Jaxon?” “We just need to learn these languages and then we have classes and teach people and we can earn a lot of money.” “It takes a long time to learn a language” I say. He totally dismissed that idea and said that it would only take about a day. Then he moved on to dad and told him the whole plan. “We are going to make so much money we are going to need a vault.” Pause while he thinks. “Do we have any big pictures at our house?” Pause again. “Oh, that one by the door. We will put our vault behind that one. Now all we need is the code to open the vault. It is going to be 9000036.” On the car ride home we are told that dad will teach the Spanish class and mom can do the French one. Tanner said that he can “talk English” and he wanted to teach that one. This evening Jaxon made and invitation for the language classes. He wanted to know what time it should be. I said he could just choose any time. I asked him when it was going to be. He said maybe tomorrow. I said that I thought it should be in September because that is when schools start. (I was hoping he would agree to that because then he would forget about this by then). He said “maybe March.”

I am not allowing him to go to the bathroom during sacrament meeting again.

Jaxon is obsessive. He gets an idea in his head and there is no getting it out. I really try to be the supportive mom and try to do something that is somewhat similar to what he wants. A few years ago, he decided that he was having a movie theatre in our house. (Remember, I do not help him with these ideas- he just starts them and tells me what I am doing to help him.) He made a sign that said “Movie” and a ticket booth with tickets. He had an “open” sign and a “closed” sign. He moved his little table right by the front door and sat there. He was waiting for people to come to watch the movie. It was Sunday so we told him that we could not have the movie until the next day. Monday morning he was sitting in that seat waiting for “all the people” to come. I called around to his friends to see if I could set up with a play date for him. I called a lot of his friends and found one that was home (what a relief!). They watched a half hour of a show and I gave them popcorn and he was happy.

He is the same way with lemonade stands. He thinks people are just walking down the street and are going to walk into our house expecting a lemonade stand or a movie theatre to be there.

A few weeks ago he had another idea that I just could not do and I could not get him to change his idea at all. We got a piano keyboard for Christmas. It is pretty fun. Jaxon’s favorite thing is to play the pre recorded songs like “Jingle bells” and “Do you know the muffin man?” Jaxon made a list of about 12 songs that he could play. “We have a program!” he announced. So I agreed to be a part of this. He said, “you sing the songs in this order and I will play them. So I performed to Tanner the audience. But this was just the practice. The real thing was to perform to dad when he got home. We did this and there was a lot of laughing but that was fine. After dinner Jaxon went and got a map of our ward. He started coloring different areas different colors. I asked him what he was doing. “This red group is coming at 4:00 tomorrow to watch the program, the blue one at 5:00, the green one at 6:00….” I said, “oh.”

I tried to talk to Jaxon nicely about how I was not going to sing in front of the whole ward. I argued that there would not be that much parking in front of our house or room inside of our house. I agreed to inviting two families over to eat brownies- but no singing. He would not give it up. After days of this, I finally had to get mad and just tell him No. He still brings it up occasionally- “I’m still doing the ward party!” he says.

I am in so much trouble when he grows up.