Celebrate your child's love of learning
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The Oddball Chronicles
And you thought your kid was weird.
Did your kid say something funny or strange today? Treasure and share those moments by adding our Kid Sayings widget to your Family.com profile. These will keep you smiling all day long.
Jadyn could spend all day using a washcloth to clean the windows, the walls, the floors, her feet — and then, sadly, her face too. She sees one, and has to have it. It must be wet. She cannot share.
When she was 3, our daughter developed a passion for our rolling pin and dubbed it Balki — odd, since she never watched Perfect Strangers. When she wanted to sleep with Balki, we were concerned she'd knock herself out (she didn't), but we allowed it since it was the first thing she'd become attached to.
One of my twin daughters insists on bringing two items into the bathroom with her. She hasn't been particular on which two — a fork and spoon, a puzzle piece and a flash card — but it must always be a pair of something she feels "go together" so they can "have a conversation" and sing her favorite potty songs with her.
My daughter found a (clean, unused) bamboo mat in the garage and insisted on lying on it in bed. It makes her happy and doesn't interrupt her sleep, so we don't fight it.
My 4-year-old collects the little pictures of checks that come in the mail from check-printing companies. He has a clear plastic billfold stuffed full of them, and carries them in his back pocket during the day (and sleeps with them next to his pillow at night).
Martha, 18 months, is a true dairy queen. Her first word was cheese, her lovey is a cow named Piper Pancakes Barney, she does the sign for milk more than 30 times a day, and nothing excites her more than mooing at the cows on our way home.
My youngest will try new foods only if he has a dollop of ketchup and mustard, along with some pickles, on his plate.
Aiden likes to hang packaging in his room, whether it's the size small sticker from new pants or the smiley sun from a juice carton.
Every morning Luke runs to the closet where the vacuum is stored. At first he was content to change the attachments and rewind the cord, but now he gets quite upset if I don't actually plug it in and make a pass through the house.
My oldest son Nathaniel, 4, has many quirks. For about 18 months, he wore his Green Bay Packers bucket hat every day, while sleeping and even in the bathtub. He must have a wet towel next to his plate so he can continuously wipe his fingers throughout dinner. And now, for the last 18 months or so, he will wear only horizontal striped shirts — so we have a closet full.
Our oldest son loves sharpening pencils with an electric sharpener. The family joke is that Matthew hardly lets a person lay down a pencil before he has picked it up and resharpened it.
Heidi went through a phase where all food had to be round. Whole apples, acceptable; apple slices, unacceptable. Provolone, okay; cheddar, yucky. (Now I'm really good at cutting freehand circles.)
String cheese. Both of my kids have to have some in bed with them when they're falling asleep. And one also prefers to have a baby wipe scrunched up in one hand.
My daughter insists on having both milk and juice at all meals and snacks. She takes a sip of one, then the other.
Christmas 2006 my son befriended four Marshmallow Peeps Snowmen, and a full year later, those snowmen are manning a pirate ship. They've been known to steer construction equipment, drive a school bus, and, in the summertime when they were a bit more malleable, don tiny plastic football helmets.
My 4-year-old smells everything — his food, his clothes, and his toys. The one thing that must always smell the same is his blanket. (He hates to have it washed.)
Ten-month-old Sophia first latched on to her spatula when I was buying kitchen tools for a bridal shower. Now she wields it triumphantly as we stroll through stores and visit the doctor — but one day it was confiscated in the church nursery out of concern for the other children.
Ethan likes his food cold. Mashed potatoes, green beans, hot chocolate — the colder, the better. When we were first teaching him how to blow on his food, he insisted it wasn't cool enough until everyone at the table blew on it.
Lately my 3-year-old, Liam, will pick one thing from his plate and refuse to eat it, like a broken piece of apple or a smiley fry that's just too smiley — but he'll eat other pieces of the same food, no problem.
Since she was about 10 months old, Madison, now 2, has needed constant access to her belly button. At night we have to use two-piece pajamas — when we tried to use sleepers, she'd cry, "Button, button."
My son has always been obsessed with infomercials. When he was little, he could recite several of them verbatim. (For example, he knew how a FoodSaver worked and would tell people they were throwing "cash in the trash.")
Ella was 18 months old when she began honing her magnificent sense of smell. She would stand at the pantry, point to one of the many jars of spices and demand, "I smole it?" Sometimes we "smoled" spices for 20 minutes at a time.
My 4-year-old loves to collect paper. She will grab everything from pamphlets at the library to business cards at restaurants to notepads at hotels. I literally have to hide my various notepads, or else they disappear.
Our 1 1/2-year-old daughter is a dentist in the making. About 20 times a day, she climbs up on the bathroom step stool, chin barely clearing the counter, and grabs blindly for a toothbrush. She'll stand there for 5 to 10 minutes, brushing and drooling down her arm, trying to spit in the sink like her brother.
When my son was between the ages of 2 and 3, he would wear this strange outfit of training pants, red mittens, and a knight helmet. (He also had to have a stick to carry.)
Like many 5-year-olds, Mia is a professional pack rat. Every drawing, every pebble, every scrap of ribbon must be saved and socked away. Normally I grin and bear it, but I knew I'd reached my limit when I saw her eyeing my pink-polished toenail clippings.
My 2-year-old can't eat a meal with his shoes on.
Now, we want to hear from you!
Now that we've heard about the wacky things your kids do, we want to know: What weird, arbitrary-yet-purposeful rules do you have for them? Maybe they owe you a dime every time they forget to hang up their coat, or they can eat pizza for dinner only if they wash it down with a glass of milk. E-mail us at familytraditions@wondertime.com.
Plus: One mom's tale of quirky parenting.
