Wordplay

My nearly 4-year old requested a game this evening as we drove to the grocery store. We've played it before, but I was pleased he remembered. The object is to say something that the other has to repeat back. Usually we use nonsense words, but you can use real words if you like, or little tunes, or rhythmic motives. It's a simplified variation on the old game of telephone, where each person has to repeat what they've just heard. Simplified because you don't have add something to the end each time. But the idea is the same: memory, imitation, and creativity. Just about anything you can do with your voice that can be imitated is fair game.

Try to pay particular attention to the intonation of your utterance, and see if that aspect is repeated as well. Pay close attention to what your child says on their turns, and try to match it as closely as possible. It's amazing the creativity that you'll hear from your child when it's their turn. The first time we played, my #1 had a tendency to make up such long elaborated babble, that there was no way I could keep up. But asking him to repeat what he said made the point. He's more reasonable these days.

You may find that your child repeats certain patterns or particular syllabic units. That's just great. It's not that different from the technique used by accomplished jazz improvisers. They have set patterns that they draw from. Your child likely will too. If you set up a nice paradigm for them, they might just use it as a template. For instance, I say: go-bldee ga-bldee blibldee boo, then it's set:

becomes the pattern for a while.

It may catch, or it may not. Being a careful observer however, you can detect which aspects of the sound are most salient for your child. At first keep emphasizing those aspects in the patterns you produce, so they'll gain confidence. As the game goes on, make it more challenging.

My son refuses to say "thank you," insisting that he can't pronounce "th". So we let him get away with saying "danke". But, to test him I came up with this game. As he got good with it, I made up words like thbling and bluth-kluh-gluth. It was quite amusing to hear him say those words, but still insist he couldn't pronounce "th". If only I had recorded him. Hmmm. Ideas for the next time.