Ethan loves to play this game where he gives us the first letter or sound of something he wants us to guess.
This was cute and fun, the first 3,837 times.
Now it gets a bit tedious.
So my response is to make absolutely absurd guesses.
This way he learns about both humor and passive-aggressive behavior, both of which are important coping skills that he’ll either need to utilize or recognize later in life.
We were driving home from school the other day and he tells me that they were drawing a musical instrument in art class.
(This greatly amused him because it was art day, not music day, but they were doing both! Ok, not really, but to him it made perfect sense.)
Ethan: “Guess what instrument we drew?”
Me: “A horse.”
Ethan (laughing hysterically): “Noooooooo! A horse isn’t an instrument.”
Me: “I give up.”
Ethan: “I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a ‘d’.”
OK, now I’ll admit here that the sane and rationale thing to do here is just say ‘drum’ and be done with it.
That’s not what I did.
Me: “A tuba!”
Ethan: “Nooooooo! A tuba doesn’t start with a ‘d’!”
Me: “I give up”
Ethan: “I’ll give you another hint, it has a curve part.”
Me: “A chair!”
Ethan: “Nooooooo!”
Me: “I give up”
You get the idea.
This goes on for several minutes, during which I’m looking around for anything nonsensically guess, and he keeps giving me guesses, most of which mean very little, such as “Sometimes they’re brown, but sometimes they aren’t brown.”
Finally the payoff comes:
Ethan: “I’ll give you another hint: it has strings.”
Wait, what?
Drums don’t have strings, do they? No, I’m pretty sure they don’t.
Me: “Wait, is it a drum? I thought it was a drum.”
Ethan: “No! It’s a GUITAR!!!”
Oh, and I’m the idiot.
Me: “‘Guitar’ doesn’t start with a ‘d’ it starts with a ‘g’ you nuthead!”
Ethan: “Well, ‘g’ and ‘d’ sound alike!”
I get the feeling he’s going to grow up to be a lawyer, because there’s no point in the argument where he feels that he can’t win by counter-argument.