November 13, 2013
Robert and I were “playing” with riddles. The riddles were simple and based on well known facts. I read one to Robert, he read one to me. He did not have any difficulties answering my riddles, but I had problems answering his. I simply couldn’t understand half of the words he was reading. I asked him to slow down, divide words into syllables, and speak louder. I understood one sentence but not the second or third. I got one syllable words, but not the more “telling”ones which usually were two or three syllables long. Somehow we managed to solve all those simple, based in fact, realistic riddles.
Then came a page with the silly ones. I did not believe that Robert who has never encountered silly riddles before was capable of understanding them. I believed that he could solve them choosing the answer from the word box simply by association, but I did not think that he could get the “silly” part. I lead him through the first one.
The second and the third Robert did on his own:
“The city popular among cows.” Robert quickly chose, “Moo York”
“How the ocean says “goodbye”?” Robert chose,”It waves.”
It was clear that Robert chose “Moo York” because it sounded as the name of his favorite place “New York” . He chose “It waves” because of the obvious connection to ocean.
I did not feel satisfied. I really wanted to explain to Robert, why those answers were silly. As I was trying to figure out how to explain the funny aspect to Robert and read the clues and the answers again, I noticed that Robert’s face radiated with shy amusement.
He didn’t need explanations. He got it.
krymarh 
Jean Palmateer
/ November 14, 2013Glad he got it, and you could enjoy his understanding.