Giraffes and Tigers and Bears! Oh My!

“What am I, Granma?” Adella asks as she hops around the room. I am in luck—I have a point of reference. A moment earlier she was pretending to be a bunny. And last Friday, we watched Zootopia together. I know she likes its bouncy rabbit protagonist Judy Hopps.

“A bunny,” I say.

“Yes.” She smiles, triumphant. “Now your turn, Granma.”

I am confined to the rocking chair with Marshall, feeding him a bottle. He is in that fragile stage between wakefulness and sleep, blissfully content. For fear of nudging him toward wakefulness, I choose not to pantomime, settling for mere sound effects.

“Ribbit, ribbit,” I say.

“An elephant,” she guesses. Elephants have long been one of Adella’s favorite animals. She has a big stuffed elephant and elephant pajamas. Jumbo, as in the song Jumbo Elephant, was one of her first words.

“No,” I reply. “Ribbit, ribbit,” I repeat.

“A hippopotamus,” she guesses. I am perplexed. I do not even know what sound a hippopotamus makes. Does she know what sound a hippopotamus makes? I do know that I am always stretched to my capacity whenever I come to the hippopotamus in the book Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? The sounds I make for it each time vary vastly.

“Ribbit, ribbit,” I repeat once more. Somehow I think scrunching up my shoulders so that my neck disappears, making my lips protrude, and puffing out my cheeks to create a jowl-like appearance will give me the appearance of a frog.

“A butterfly,” she quickly guesses.

Perhaps my “ribbits” are not very expressive, I conclude. Or at least my particular vocalization for a frog is not in her repertoire. It is clear she has no idea. But she does not care. The fun of the game is in the guessing.

“I am a frog,” I say.

Adella does not acknowledge my answer. She does not say, “Oh, I see,” or “I should have known.” She does not care that I have preempted her guessing. She is excited because it is once again her turn to act.

“Now, Granma, it’s my turn.” She moves from one end of the family room to the other, her arms flapping as she twirls around and around.

“A butterfly,” I guess, once more aided by the fact that she has shown her hand in her previous guess about my frog.

“You’re right, Granma.” She is beaming—she has given a clue and I have guessed it. It is a moment of connection with the adult world. “Your turn.”

I am determined to give her a better clue this time. Marshall has nodded off, so I settle him firmly in my lap. I arch my arms over my head, my hands curled threateningly claw-like. “Grrr,” I whisper-roar with great ferocity.  I think my imitation of a bear is spot on.

“A dinosaur,” she says.

“No,” I reply, “but that’s a good guess.” She is used to going on dinosaur hunts with Uncle Daniel, a game he and Pop-pop invented to entertain Adella one Sunday afternoon when they were babysitting and Pop-pop wanted a few extra moments to nap. Uncle Daniel and Adella searched the house for dinosaurs until they found Pop-pop, the sleeping dinosaur. They poked and prodded the sleeping dinosaur, who then roared to life and then like a Tyrannasours Rex, slowly lumbered after a delighted, squealing Adella.

“A monkey,” she guesses next. From her perspective, another reasonable guess. She likes Curious George and often pretends to be a monkey when she eats a banana. Sometimes, she too has an impish way of getting into predicaments.

“No,” I reply again.

“A giraffe,” she guesses next. And I am reminded of a friend’s description of playing the parlor game Twenty Questions with his young children. Rather than asking logical yes-no questions, trying to deduce what object he was thinking about, his children would go straight to random guesses. Usually their first question was, “Is it a bear?” Perhaps that is why I have chosen a bear.

Then I decide to take a different track, make this a teaching moment.

“No,” I say, adding, “but the name of my animal starts with a B, the sound buh.”

I realize this clue is beyond Adella’s ability. She does know her alphabet. She can sing her ABCs. And she does associate some letters with names—A is for Adella, M is for Marshall. But she is egocentric—she has not yet grasped that the letter A is ubiquitous, not unique to her name, a letter essential to playing Hangman or that all those other letters work together to create words and sentences without end. But how will she ever know if I do not teach her. Pushing a child just beyond her borders of knowledge is an important part of teaching.

“A bee,” she replies ecstatically. “You’re a bee.”

“Nooooo.” I reply in that encouraging tone of voice which conveys the message “Welll…., not exactly, that’s a good try, you are almost right,” while voicing the word no. After all, she has drawn the connection between my letter B and the insect. Round One of my teaching moment has not gone as planned, but it does have a positive result I decide to go in for Round Two.

“I’m a Buh eh…,” trailing off, hoping she will add an rrr and complete the word.

“A tiger,” she guesses.

Maybe I am not giving her enough context, I decide. Undaunted, I rush in for Round Three, stretching out all three phonemes of the word bear.

“No, I’m a buh-eh-rr.”

She jumps up and down, excitedly. “I know. I know. You’re a buh-eh-rr,” she says, simply repeating me, clueless as to what kind of animal a buh-eh-rr is.

“You’re right,” I say, laughing as I surrender to the moment. “A bear. A bear,” I say, drawing the connection for her. “Grrr. I am a bear.”  

But Adella does not really hear me. She has moved on, completely missing the connection between the word she has said and the animal she knows. My turn has occupied far too much of her time. She has lost interest. I retreat to the safety of my corner, metaphorically speaking—I have never really left my rocking chair. At least Marshall is still sleeping.

And such are the nature of teaching moments with a preschooler: pure trial and error, over and over again. She keeps guessing and guessing and guessing until something sticks. And I keep trying and trying until something connects. One day, when she is a little older and her cognitive abilities a little more developed, this grandmother will more easily be able to teach Adella, helping her connect all kinds of dots. Maybe then I will be able to share my wisdom. But will it be as much fun?