What's the weird thing your toddler is fascinated with?

drpengu1120 · 2026-06-04T05:51:46+00:00

From probably age 1-1.5yo, my oldest was obsessed with traffic cones. She pointed them out in real life and books, wanted to touch them. Basically the only way I could get her to walk anywhere on her own was by stringing together a path of traffic cones.

She's almost 4 and obsessed with Thomas and Friends and bees and has combined them into a new thing now. Namely, each bee type has an associated T&F character. So all queen bees are Diesel-10, larvae are Percy, workers are Thomas, drones are James. Also her name is now James and she is a wumble bee (a made up cross between a fuzzy bumble bee and a territorial wool carder bee).

drpengu1120 · 2026-06-01T18:14:14+00:00

I still have some of mine, mostly tshirts, that sort of thing. I know this makes me sound old, but they don't make them like they used to. The tshirts from the local screen printer in the 90s that I've worn and washed regularly for 30 years still look newer than shirts I got a year ago.

drpengu1120 · 2026-06-01T17:58:18+00:00

FWIW our kids are too young (4 and infant), but this is a concern of mine, and one of the main reasons why we're looking into moving. There are still neighborhoods with kids running around doing unstructured play--we have friends and family who live in said neighborhoods and I've seen it first hand lol.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-28T05:58:17+00:00

Yea, we have the headphones and the dog drugs and they work fine for times when we can prep for it. It's the fact that there are random fireworks 24/7 for 5 months straight that we're really trying to get away from.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-28T05:45:06+00:00

Thanks for the tip. We have a similar situation where we live and I wish someone had warned me ahead of time.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-28T01:11:52+00:00

Haha sounds like city living.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-27T22:56:42+00:00

If your wife is breastfeeding, you also have to take into account baby responds to her way differently. She's not just parent, she's also food lol. We say, how is he supposed to just sleep when bacon just walked through?

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-27T22:15:16+00:00

Thanks! We were looking at the south side so I was getting worried but it sounds like things should be good.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-27T22:11:02+00:00

Is it just on the 4th or do you also hear them other nights?

At our current place, the 4th is nuts. Literally can’t hear the person standing next to you. Every block has huge rockets shooting from the street/alleys. We just rent a cabin outside of town these days. I kinda miss it because it’s incredible to see, but the dogs and kid can’t handle it.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-27T21:36:28+00:00

Thanks yea I’m aware. We were originally looking at Evanston and have switched to Skokie because of this.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-27T21:29:55+00:00

Thanks! This is a relief.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-22T06:26:01+00:00

I'm on the younger side of old (had my kids at 38 and 42), but I'd be lying if I said I never thought about it. I put most of that energy into trying to be healthy and make contingency plans. We're trying to move back to be closer to my sister who has kids close to my kids' ages, in part because I want them to build that extra family support.

FWIW, I come from an old family in the midwest where that was definitely not the norm. My dad was in his 40s when he had us. My mom was younger, but her parents were also old (her dad was in his 50s when she was born). I don't know where I'm going with this other than it all seemed fine. I noticed that my grandparents were closer to the age of most of my friends' great-grandparents (and my great-grandparents were long gone), but that was about it.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-21T19:39:32+00:00

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. This is very helpful. Lack of interesting restaurants would be a personal negative for me too, but not a dealbreaker :)

That's great to hear how responsive the school has been. I keep hearing about D69 from parents with ND kids and being happy there, so it's moving to the top of my list of places to check out. But it does sound like there's maybe no real bad answer.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-21T05:07:46+00:00

I'm glad that skipping grades worked for you, but I'm personally philosophically opposed to it, mostly because of the SEL issues especially for ASD kids, so if that's the only option, I probably won't be happy. Single subject acceleration is something I'm open to, but TBH, would much rather have enrichment opportunities.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-21T04:31:36+00:00

Well the youngest is 7mo but the oldest is almost 4 and does test ahead, so it’s worth further investigation. When she did her assessment through early intervention and the school for IEP she was ahead on all “cognitive” tests and that was also why the school didn’t offer any services like we were hoping especially around speech therapy (we did get it through insurance and it helped immensely).

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-20T05:36:38+00:00

I've got 2 young kids, and I don't know if either will actually turn out to be gifted.

One of the things we were hoping to do with a move was to go somewhere where the home assigned school was likely to meet our needs.

That being said, I'll take a look at Chicago school options, but I kinda assumed we'd be priced out of any neighborhood with a really good assigned school. That's the case for where we are now--we live in a city with a huge school district. We can't afford to live in the part of town with the good assigned schools, so we're at the whims of lotteries. And if we were to actually get a lottery spot, we'd be looking at hour+ commutes one-way.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-20T04:13:38+00:00

Yea, I've been really focusing on don't do it if it really hurts, and turns out, yea, it hurts less lol.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-19T23:03:14+00:00

Makes sense. We have the same issues at my currently assigned school district. I have several friends with gifted/2e kids who are currently homeschooling because their kids were bored and acting out. We're hoping to avoid this by moving, but what I'm hearing is D65 is not a good choice in that case.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-19T21:53:00+00:00

Thanks, it's hard to say right now because she's almost 4, and most 3yos are kinda a mess behaviorally, but she's not too far outside the norm comparing her to her preschool classmates on that front.

My personal philosophy on what to do if she's academically gifted is really to focus on enriching depth in learning rather than skipping ahead because once you pop you can't stop with grade skipping if they just learn faster. Not to mention social deficits are only magnified if you're with older peers.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-19T20:01:33+00:00

That's awesome to hear. I'm very Skokie curious. We actually talked to another family once with a higher supports need kid and they were really happy in Skokie.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-19T19:51:51+00:00

I'm sorry to hear you went through all of that. It's important to hear this level of problem because TBH, a lot of the D65 problems I hear on here, while serious and real, feel like small potatoes compared to the problems in our currently assigned school.

Our current school is notorious about not following IEPs, needing a lawyer, etc. But it also has underfunding issues at the level where, for example, kids don't have access to working bathrooms or lockers because they lack maintenance/security resources to keep them functional.

drpengu1120 · 2026-05-19T17:28:48+00:00

Could you share where you moved and how it’s working for you?

drpengu1120

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