Give us a clue

Part of Raiyan’s programme recently was for Raiyan to tell us why something is what he thinks it is. For example, when shown a picture of a “cowboy” and if Raiyan himself thinks it is a cowboy, he has to tell us why he thinks it is a cowboy, which would be reasons like the boy being on a horse, him wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and with him carrying a lasso. Raiyan slowly learnt that these things are called “clues”.

He ended up getting really keen on doing this as he just loves to get us to guess what he is holding or what it is he likes etc and if we say we don’t know, he will say “Ok I give you a clue! It is round, blue and it bounces!” (A ball!) OR “It has a mouse and cat in it and it begins with the letter T!” (Tom and Jerry!).

This has also proven to be good for reducing our prompts with him because rather than just tell him the answer straight away, we would instead give him clues and wait until he figures it out eventually. Naturally, this is really conducive towards his language development as well.

But most of all, it has proved to be really helpful during those times when we are not completely sure if he knows something but instead what he does is to pretend to know it. What this incredibly cheeky boy like to do is to trick us to telling HIM the answer by asking us to guess when in fact we are just going to feed him the answer by doing that!

For example, when we were about to visit his dear friend Fadhil at the hospital and whilst deciding on what present to buy for him, babah asked Raiyan if he knows what Fadhil likes. At first we can tell that he was just playing “hentam” because he was saying “Dinasours, animals and Tom and Jerry” which we know are the things that HE likes.

But then he said “Oh I know what it is. Come on Babah you know what it is. Guess!”

We probably made like close to 10 guesses and Raiyan kept saying “No.. come on.. you know it..” And even when we kept saying we give up and begged him to tell us the answer, he still insisted that babah knew the answer and so he’s not giving it away!

Around the 11th guess, I started to get suspicious on whether or not he actually knows the answer and perhaps what he was really doing was to trick us into telling him what Fadhil’s favourite thing is because he himself actually has no idea!

But lo and behold, I remembered the “give us a clue” trick and asked him for one and he immediately said “it begins with the letter F and we watched on TV at Adik’s house”. Only then did babah completely remembered “Fireman Sam” which he vaguely remembered Raiyan telling him about them all watching it together during one of the times they were at Adik’s house!

We really can’t ever underestimate this boy or what! :D