I am the current owner of a 2025 model-year human baby. When I first signed his paperwork, he wasn’t running or even turning over, but now he’s fully mobile, though there are a few gremlins I’m still trying to work out. The gremlin I want to talk about today is his extreme obsession with wheels and tires. Is this how all human babies behave in their first few miles? Or do I need to have him checked out by my local baby-mechanic?
My wife and I recently took our baby Delmar (not his real name) to a flea market. We figured it was a nice Sunday, and this might be a good way to get some walking in, show Delmar some people and things, and maybe score a white-hot deal while we were at it.
This particular flea market takes place at a community college, with around half of the vendors outside and the other half inside a parking garage (which is nice, because the sun is intense). The month prior I had scored a scorching deal on two pairs of pants (My wife was upset that I didn’t try to bargain at all, especially given that I was buying multiple, but the pants are great). I ruined almost my entire wardrobe assembling a WWII Jeep from scratch, so my primary focus this time around was to find more deals on some clean threads.
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Unfortunately, that task would become impossible, as my one-year-old decided he was going to go absolutely bonkers over wheels and tires. It started with a golf cart; Delmar pointed at its wheels and tires and refused to continue walking. I picked him up, and he went nuts, wiggling in my arms like a fish out of water.
I carried him 250 feet over about a minute, figuring that by now he could move on to the hundreds of amazing vintage goods all around us — colorful clothing, shiny old mirrors, priceless sports memorabilia. But nope, as soon as I set Delmar down, he turned around and booked it back towards that golf cart, which was now on the other side of the parking garage.
Fast forward a few minutes, and as I walked through the parking garage with my wife Elise (not her real name), Delmar wandered off again, this time towards a U-Haul van.
He could not handle it. He jumped up and down, pointed with both hands, he started screaming. At one point, he was so excited he fell to the ground. He was more excited about that U-Haul van’s rear wheel/tire than I have been about anything in life.
After far too much time going nuts over that U-Haul van’s rear wheels, Delmar then decided to walk down the entire line of vendor-vans, going crazy as soon as he reached their wheels/tires.
Here’s an old Dodge Ram van:
Here are some all-terrain tires on a Ford Econoline:
And this Toyota Sienna was apparently too much for Delmar to handle, so he just went in for the bear-hug:
Delmar is so nuts about wheels and tires that he went absolutely mad over an elderly lady’s electric scooter wheels:
Now, I have to admit I was a bit confused about all this. I myself like a nice set of wheels and tires as much as the next person, but I don’t care if I see the most beautiful BFG all-terrains on the cleanest set of Rotiform gold wheels on earth — I’m still not going to go as nuts as Delmar did at that flea market.
Of course, there is a bit of biology to this all.
The Rotation Schema
My wife and I attend baby classes every week because we’re first-time parents, and it’s a good way to understand our child and to avoid certain parenting mistakes, while giving Delmar a chance to meet other kids. As such, we’ve been learning a lot about how babies’ brains work.
One thing I find especially interesting is the concept of “schema.” The way I interpret it is that a schema is like a building block needed to interprent our world around us. From the popular toymaker Lovevery.
A schema is a cognitive framework that helps your toddler organize and interpret information. Once a schema is established, your child is able to use it as a blueprint to process similar information. This means they don’t start with a blank slate every time they face a new situation or object—previous repetition and trial and error offers them valuable clues.
Lovevery specifically mentions why babies are obsessed with spinning things like wheels, writing:
If your toddler can’t get enough of things that spin, they’re probably working on their “rotation” schema. This is a form of play that can involve rolling balls, pushing toy cars, twirling their body, watching a pinwheel, and turning and twisting anything they can get their hands on.
What they learn from this schema play will help them later as they tackle math concepts like symmetry and geometry. It can also help develop physical skills like drawing, turning knobs, and dancing.
What’s odd is that Delmar loves wheels and tires that are not spinning, but I think it may be because he knows they typically spin, and maybe he’s going nuts over them because he wants them to spin, since his brain is pre-wired to want to see and experience rotation.
While part of me hopes this phase ends soon so we can walk through parking lots without him going absolutely mad, every parent tells me to enjoy all this weirdness because it doesn’t last long. So Delmar, keep going nuts over that rolling stock. As an extreme car geek who obsesses over automotive minutiae, I’m not one to talk.
My child is turning 2 and has been obsessed with fans; ceiling fans, hand held fans, floor fans, propellers, etc. Points them out every time we go out and we often visit the big box hardware stores just so he can walk down the aisle for the ceiling fan display.
My 4 yo will still occasionally decide to start trying to play with the wheels on my car if I take a breath longer to open the door and get her in the carseat than usual. It’s like a magnetic pull or something. Then again she also has at least 30 toy cars.
My son just turned 5, and this brought back all the memories – when he was around Delmar’s age, he was obsessed with gears – we would take him to the children’s museum, and they had a wall of gears (make patterns, spin a gear, spins all the connected gears, etc). We could not pull that boy away from them if his life depended on it.
A really rewarding way to spend time with your toddler is to read books and make the noises that go with the things on the page. There are some great classics with things involving wheels. Later on you can revisit the same book and go into more detail then just sounds: The red car is a sports car! Vroom.
Years from now, when Delmar is saving up for yet another set of shiny rims for his truck, you can produce photographic evidence: “But you used to love steelies!!!”
On another topic, it’s been ages since I visited a flea market; are those chef statue things the flea market version of time-out dolls?
It’s amazing how hard it is to get a toddler to go somewhere when they don’t want to.
My first kid was obsessed with the “Put it in Game”, as his Mom called it. It’s endlessly putting an item inside another item. Their little brains are learning geometry, volume, and the beginnings of math. I’ve never heard that as a “schema”, but it makes sense.
His very favorite put-it-in-game was the laundry chute. He would methodically put everything he could reach and pick up down the laundry chute. My job when I got home from work was to take a clothes basket to the basement and retrieve the immense pile of items from the laundry pile and put it all back.