Anyone else's kids just not into trains?

jsugrin

My boys always were so excited over the train table at B&N so when santa brought one for Christmas '10 I was sooooo excited.  I had all these visions of sitting and being able to read while they played for hours.  So not what happened.

Neither of them really care for the thing at all!  They may play with it for 30 min in an entire month.  Of course they don't want to get rid of it, or anything else the little hoarders but darn that thing takes up a lot of room.  Plus I'm sitting there looking at how much money there is in Thomas stuff and thinking that it could be put to way better use on lego's.  In fact I could probably keep the table and turn it into a lego table instead, as much as I hate how much room that darn thing takes up.

Seems like every kid I know is obsessed with trains, except mine.  Anyone else?

KellyMRocks

Grey has never been much into trains.

dirtbikemom

Sara was never into trains.  My friend's son loved trains when he was little so they got a train table and as he got older she converted it into a Lego table.  He is 10 now and still plays with Legos on it. 

I say convert it to a Lego table! 

MommySteph2009

Bummer.  As you know my son loves trains, but at times he will not play with them for a month at a time.  Right now he is more into legos.

EmmieB

nope, but he's seriously into cars.

He likes playing with train tables at bookstores, but given the choice he skips it.

We went for the grow-with-me table from land of nod because it has drawers (storage!) and a paper roll (art!) and you can get taller legs (school desk!) and he uses it for everything from playing with cars to building with blocks to coloring and painting.

I say it's time to cull the thomas collection and then make a trip to ikea for a paper roll and then just let it be an activity table.

I do have to make sure the table doesn't collect too much stuff on it or he tends to forget it's something other than storage.

good luck! 

tri_bride05

jsugrin:

 I had all these visions of sitting and being able to read while they played for hours. 

 

Both boys LOVE trains, but they also FIGHT over trains so sitting back and being able to read is not happening here either. 5 min of happy train table time is a miracle. If anyone finds the magic toy to keep two energetic boys playing together for hours I wanna know! :-)

jsugrin

Yeah I think it's time to sell off all the Thomas stuff and probably some of the track too.  I guess I'll keep a few things to they can build one if they want.  I really wish I had gone with the Trackmaster stuff from the beginning because they both are definitely more into trains that can move on their own.

It's so funny how their little brains work.  They will spend hours creating all kind of elaborate things pushing around their construction related trucks, garbage trucks and so so on the firetrucks but it's like pushing a train around on a track is a big snoozefest.

futrkingsley

C has an on-again/off-again love of trains. My mom got him trackmaster trains first, well before it was age appropriate and I can say they are a PITA.  They aren't that well made and they only "go" together one way (Thomas can't cachunk together with a train from his front, only from his back) and only go one direction.  They also have zero resale value.

Family members gave C buckets full of take and play trains and he used those a lot once he got into it, but he rarely used the tracks.  In fact, other than a few months of really enjoying the Geotrax set he picked out, we have amassed a whole collection of seven different types of trains (that don't go together at all) that he doesn't play with as intended. He always preferred to BE a train conductor or engineer on the couch, or whatever.  Thankfully we avoided the train table monstrosity -- he never would have used it, I'm sure of it.

As for your boys, they sound super creative.  I have rarely seen really creative train play from this age group (even in huge groups of train loving kids) -- it's all focused on mini-empire building.  Who makes the track where he wants it to go, who has the most trains, who pushes his train over the other kid's train.  

 

Mrs.BoomBoom

jsugrin:

It's so funny how their little brains work.  They will spend hours creating all kind of elaborate things pushing around their construction related trucks, garbage trucks and so so on the firetrucks but it's like pushing a train around on a track is a big snoozefest.

Q is majorly into trains but has zero interest on them riding around on tracks.  He likes to send his trackmaster across the house and likes to send everything (cars, planes, etc) down his spiral track but we've pulled up all his bigger track and he uses the train table as a huge play table.  I like that it keeps everything off the floor.