My 7-year-old won’t stop talking about the same garbage truck. Am I doing something wrong?
I’m sitting here drinking cold coffee at 9:17 a.m., it’s summer break, so my kid hasn’t even left the house yet, and I’ve already fielded four separate conversations about the broken side mirror on the green city garbage truck that comes down our street every Tuesday. Four. Before I even loaded the dishwasher from breakfast.
Three days ago we were at the Kroger picking up popsicles, and he spotted a city worker loading empty carts by the door, and dragged me over there just to ask the guy if he knew the driver with the broken mirror, and if he could tell him Leo (that’s my kid’s name) drew him a picture. The guy was very nice, but I saw him glance at me like “is this kid okay” and I wanted to hide behind the display of watermelons. That’s the thing about these obsessive conversations, right? It’s not that it’s annoying at home (okay, it is a little annoying at home), it’s the public awkwardness that makes your skin crawl. You start wondering if every other parent is judging you for not teaching your kid to talk about normal things, like Minecraft or cartoon characters.
Two nights ago it was 8:45, he was supposed to be asleep, I was already on the couch scrolling, about to put on that show I’ve been trying to finish for a month, and he yells down the stairs “MOM? DID YOU KNOW THAT BROKEN MIRROR MEANS THE DRIVER CAN’T SEE THE BIKES WHEN HE TURNS?” I lost it. I stomped up the stairs and said “Leo, for the love of God, can we please talk about literally anything else? Anything.” And he just pulled his dinosaur blanket up to his chin and nodded, and his eyes got all shiny, and I felt like the worst person alive. I sat down next to him and apologized, but he just said he was tired and turned over. I sat there for ten minutes after that, thinking what is wrong with me, and what is wrong with this? Am I overreacting? Is this something I should be worried about?
I texted my sister that night, because she works at a daycare and is around little kids all day, and I didn’t want to ask Dr. Google because Dr. Google will tell you your kid has 17 different rare conditions by the second paragraph. She wrote back immediately, said “Oh yeah, this is super common. My class had a kid who talked about storm drains for two months straight. Kids just find something that feels big to them, and their brains don’t know how to let it go yet. It’s not a problem unless it’s stopping him from doing other stuff.” Is it stopping him from doing other stuff? Let’s see: he still runs around the backyard chasing our cat, still builds terrible Lego castles that fall apart when you look at them, still argues with me for 20 minutes every day about why he deserves extra screen time. He just inserts the garbage truck into every other conversation. Like, when we were talking about his friend’s birthday party last weekend, he went “Birthday cake is good. Also, the garbage truck with the broken mirror went past the birthday party last Tuesday.” It’s just a side note, always, lurking.
Last Monday I was folding laundry, he was going on about how the mirror got broken in the first place (hit a big wooden mailbox on the corner of Oak Street, in case you were wondering), and I was just nodding going “mmhmm yeah” while I matched socks, and he just stopped talking mid-sentence and said “You don’t actually care, do you?” And that hurt way more than any awkward public moment. I sat down on the floor with him, put the socks away, and said “I do care, I’m just bad at listening right now. Tell me again why you like talking about this truck so much?” And that’s when I remembered. The day the mirror broke, we were walking to the park, and the driver pulled over to check it, and he waved at Leo and said “Hey little man, you like trucks?” And Leo said yeah, and the driver let him lean in the window and honk the horn. I was standing there checking my work email, I barely paid attention. I forgot that that was the coolest thing that had happened to Leo all month.
I used to think I had two options: either drop everything and listen every single time, which is impossible when I’m trying to pay bills or make dinner, or shut it down, which makes him feel bad. What I’ve been doing lately, that works most of the time, is I just give him two minutes. I put my phone down, look at him, ask one question like “Do you think the driver will get it fixed this week?” and then I say “Okay, I have to stir the pasta now, but you can tell me one more thing while I stir.” It’s not perfect. Sometimes he keeps going, and sometimes I’m too tired to even do the two minutes, and I just say “Buddy, I need five minutes of quiet, can we talk about it after lunch?” And he’s okay with that, most of the time.
It’s been three weeks now of garbage truck talk. I still get embarrassed when he corners a stranger at the park to talk about the mirror. Last week the pizza delivery guy had to stand there for a full minute while Leo explained why broken mirrors are a safety hazard, and I tipped him three extra dollars just for putting up with it. I still check sometimes, like, is this a thing I should be worried about? I don’t have a neat answer. I haven’t “fixed” it. Some days I think it’s just what kids do, get so excited about something small that feels huge to them, and we as adults just have to not suck the excitement out of it because we’re bored or embarrassed. Other days I’m counting down the days until he latches onto something else, anything else, even dinosaurs, which I also know nothing about.
This morning, after the fourth garbage truck conversation, he pulled out the crumpled drawing he made, the one with the green truck and a big lopsided broken mirror, and wrote “TO THE TRUCK DRIVER” on the bottom in big blue crayon letters. It’s pretty cute, honestly. Even if I never want to hear the words “broken side mirror” again as long as I live.
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