Fiber gummies!

For kids with constipation problems this might be an answer. We used regular old prunes here for several years, but FW eventually grew tired of them. We needed something new and exciting to keep him regular, and then these made the scene. They are not a laxative. The jury is still out, but we're giving them a chance.

Update: Nothing wrong with these per se, but we went back to our old standby, fresh fruit.

Jonny Quest

FW isn't much of a TV or movie watcher. He likes documentaries like Blue Planet and Microcosmos, but other than that it's been a struggle to get him to sit and watch TV. I know what you're thinking--what kind of a crazy parent wants her kid to watch more TV? But nutty as it sounds, we think it's important to encourage FW to do things other kids his age do.

Since we wanted him to enjoy his TV watching experience, we tried to find cartoons that would hit on the things he likes: science, "freaky" creatures, cool gadgets, and airplanes. I remembered Jonny Quest from my childhood, and this has been a big hit. Netflix has the first season, which I think is all that's available at this point. It's a bit on the scary side--people get shot with guns (although there's no gore) and blown up in explosions, for example. There are also "monsters" which, as in Scooby Doo, turn out to be man-made creations. But FW loves it. I am now mining the vast catalog of 1960s and early 70s cartoons for things FW will enjoy as much as he enjoys Jonny Quest. [Note: this is the original 1960s "Jonny Quest," and not "The New Adventures of Jonny Quest" or "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest," which came later].

Wedgits

FW has never been a big Lego guy. When he does build with them, he tends to do and redo the same swan and the same airplane as illustrated in the instruction booklet. Life with building toys was a bit of a yawn around here until a friend of mine sent FW Wedgits.

Wedgits are big, chunky geometric shapes designed to be, well, wedged together. In FW's set, Wedgits To Go, there are large and small octahedrons, plus small, medium, large, and giant rhombuses (rhombi?). The kit came with a deck of cards showing different Wedgit designs, but no directions on how to create what is seen in the pictures. Although I was concerned about that at first, I soon realized that it gives the child room to experiment, observing the different designs and attempting to create them. FW has been quite good at this, and Wedgits seem like the perfect toy for visual thinkers. I call it a math toy. Whatever floats your boat.

Neurodiveristy advocacy in action, 1950

Model rocketry

FW's special interest has recently veered back to something he first enjoyed when he was two or three, airplanes. Since he'd already collected pretty much every Matchbox Sky Buster (and saved each package), his focus now moved to radio-controlled planes. To be honest, I have no idea how he knew such a thing even existed. Sometimes his special interests come to him like magic--nothing we've introduced or encouraged. When this mysterious new passion hit, I helped FW learn as much as possible, and we spent a lot of time on YouTube finding RC plane videos to watch. He became so excited by this, that I did a little research and found a local RC airplane group that flies planes at a local field every weekend. FW went with his dad a couple times to see the planes fly, but it was pretty obvious that this was a hobby we were not going to be able to embrace. The world of RC aircraft is sophisticated and expensive--these "toy" planes are really for grown men, and FW is simply too small to handle them. So we had a dilemma--how could we allow FW to enjoy his special interest if the special interest was something we couldn't manage?

In my original search for local RC airplane clubs, I happened upon a model rocketry club operating in our county. Since FW has a vague interest in outer space, I thought maybe we could get him as excited about the rocketry as he had been about the RC planes. When I mentioned it all to my husband, I learned something I didn't know--my husband had been a model rocketry enthusiast when he was a boy. As it turned out, he was quite giddy at the prospect of getting back into this arcane world.

After jump-starting FW's interest by letting him pour over old Estes catalogs online, we picked up some rocket kits at Michael's Crafts and at local hobby shops. FW and his dad worked together to build, paint, and launch the rockets with the local club. Very cool.

Sometimes they blow up.

Halloween

Tomopterid!

Bug love

FW goes back and forth between different science interests, and now and again he returns to his insect fascination, which began when he was three. Last year, when FW just had to know the names of every type of beetle he found in the yard, we bought him Arthur V. Evans's Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America, which is an incredibly complete guidebook intended for adults. Our recent discovery, which is more age-appropriate yet still detailed and amazing, is the Simon & Schuster Children's Guide to Insects and Spiders. Due to its manageable amount of text and big, gorgeous pictures, we can even read this one to FW at bedtime. Then he can drift off to sleep thinking of the beautiful Oleander sphinx moth, or of a bot fly laying eggs in a deer's nostril.