We've had a heatwave in our neck of the woods for the past three days. So, once the worst of the afternoon was over, I put out the slipNslide for the kids to play on. Jonah was a bit put out by the fact the inflatable end of it was broken. It suffered a blowout the other day and is beyond repair. Still, the slide is fine and so we set it out. Normally, you connect the hose to the slide itself, but I thought it would be more fun to hang it over a tree branch and have it misting down upon the whole thing (rather than weakly squirting from the slide itself).
My 6 year old was ecstatic with the new set up and eagerly encouraged her brother to join in. However, the popped end and the unorthodox setup of the hose, was enough to set Jonah off on a "fixation." He grew grumpier and grumpier by the minute - repeatedly bringing up the fact the the slide was "broken" and therefore unusable. He also continually asked for us to go get a new one (the answer being no).
Seeing where this was going we gave him the choice of either playing on the slide as is, or going inside and missing out on the fun. He sputtered, attempted to bring up the "broken-ness" slide again and even started to get frustratedly tearful. Finally, the grumpy mutterings turned to laughter and a good time was had by all.
sounds like you guys have some great strategies to deal with those "fixations." We are still working on it at our house!
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