Why do you always sing?

We all have our favourite things to do, things that make us feel good, which provide us with a few moments out of the day to forget everything and one of them for me is listening to music really loud in the car and singing. I tend not to do it anymore because it seems as though my son likes to listen to music, especially music with a strong beat so we have a few songs that we put on that we listen to but he likes to get lost in the music rather than listen to me sing so I do my utmost best not to sing along to them. One day we were driving along and I broke out into song and he looked at me with disdain and asked…

“Why do you always sing?”

And I found my opportunity to speak to my son about something I wanted to know. I knew what made me happy but I didn’t know what made my son happy which sounds odd but he never ever seems genuinely happy and I needed to know what to do to make him happy. He wasn’t always open to talking, certainly not what I wanted to talk about, he just liked to talk about what he wanted to talk about, usually time, or maths or deep and meaningful questions like Have I got one eye or two eyes?  or Have I got a hole in my bum?. So I answered his question honestly and asked him a question at the same time…

“It makes me really happy. What makes you happy?”
He sat and thought about it for a while and he then said….
“Maths.”
“Anything else?”
“The times tables.”
“Anything else?”
A long pause and then finally……
“No.”

And that was the end of that conversation. And although there was a part of me that felt sad about his answers because it didn’t include things like me!!!! Or spending time with family, or playing games, or watching you tube, I understood his love for numbers. My god did I understand his love for numbers. Everything came back to numbers with this kid. Everything. Numbers are predictable, reliable; you always know where you stand with them. And for my son, that is why he likes them, they’re a source of calm in a world that he struggles in. He likes them because he knows where he stands with them.

As a consequence of his love for numbers there were many games we played which involved numbers. Top Trumps was one of them – I took the 3 packs of Top Trumps we have, with me most places and we had to play all 3 games but the biggie that we were currently in was Uno. Uno had become our life. We played it all the time. My son would wake up on a morning and straight away would ask to play Uno. Every morning we played 3 games of Uno before he could start the day. Of course I would much prefer to have a cup of tea but I am aware that this is what he needs to do so I play the games, sometimes I am desperate to lose so I can get my beloved cup of tea and if you have ever tried to lose at Uno you will know its really difficult!!!! On days where he is off school every so often throughout the day he will ask to play uno and we have to play 3 games each time. I have realised he asks to play it when he is starting to feel dysregulated and playing it regulates him. And it doesn’t escape my notice that everything comes to the number 3 – we play 3 games of uno, we play 3 different type of Top Trumps, and when I think of some of the rituals that my son carries out they all seem to revolve around the number 3, or 6 (a multiple of 3). Doing things 3 times or 6 times, saying things 3 times, counting and asking about the number 3. And then when I think about it some more I realise that my son’s name has 3 letters in his first name, and 3 letters in his surname so only 6 letters in total. And then if you had read What happens when the year turns to 3? you would know he has said he likes the number 3 because it’s a “calm number”. There is something clearly significant about the number 3 for my son!!! Not only for my son though. The number 3 seems to hold a lot of significance in the world – for scientists (Tesla, Pythagoras) who believed 3 held the key to the universe. Three also holds a lot of significance in religion (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism) with many religions signifying the number 3 as divine perfection so 3 is a very significant number to many many people. But more importantly the number 3 is clearly important to my son. And therefore its extremely important to me.

Thanks to my son asking why I love to sing I now know that what makes my son happy is maths and the timetables (much like singing makes me happy) and what makes him calm is the number 3. So I need to take that and use it, I need to incorporate numbers and the number 3 into our days as much as possible, in to our games, in to our rituals and into our conversations. Somehow I have managed to incorporate it into his name so it’s clear that for us, good things truly do come in threes. And perhaps I just need to come up with songs that have the number 3 in so we can sing them together!!!

Can anyone think of songs with the number three in? Let me know below.