I-Spy

There are some games that all children can play (peek a boo springs to mind.) There are some games that most children cannot play (Chess, although my brother was a grand master.) And there are some games that most children at a young age can grasp. I-spy falls into this category: even if you start by looking for things of specific colours rather than beginning with letters, most children will understand the concept of looking for something you can see with a common theme. My daughter has some interesting takes on this game. Firstly, she will not spell. Well, I say ‘will not’ but it may be ‘cannot’, it is hard to tell as on any given day she will tell you the correct spelling of Ankylosaurus (which I can’t without spell check) but fail to spell “mummy”.

We tend to stick to colours if at all possible, although I have tried with first letters to encourage her literacy. The problem is, we can be driving along and she will tell you that she can see something beginning with ‘C’ and after many guesses she will then inform you that the answer was ‘unicorn’. Now there are many reasons why this was difficult to guess and you will understand our frustration in playing with her. Not the least that there was no unicorn visible. 

When it comes to your turn to suggest a letter or colour you better hope that someone (specifically her) gets it right first time, or an argument will ensue. There are two flavours of argument: the first will be when you tell her that her guess was incorrect and will promptly be informed that it wasn’t. It goes like this:
I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘o’

Her guess “Unicorn!”

Response “No. Also that doesn’t begin with ‘o’.”

Her response “Yes it was!” 

Wherein you either go down the pantomime ‘oh no it wasn’t/oh yes it was’ routine until you arrive at your destination, or she will have a tantrum. 

The other flavour of argument is where she will tantrum because someone else guessed it and got it right, and she wanted to, or no one got it in which case you are wrong for making it too hard. 

Our bathroom has a cephalopod motif, there is a link here I assure you. We sometimes play I-spy when getting her dry from the bath. This time she told us she could see something brown. The only brown things in the bathroom are the stickers of octopuses. I guessed octopus and was told no. Having gone through every other object in the bathroom regardless of colour I gave up, and was informed the answer was octopus. On protesting that I’d started with that, she informed me that I had had the ‘wrong’ octopus.

So apparently not only do you need the correct word, you also need to be able to identify the exact sticker from the 40 identical stickers that are littered around the room. Even then I doubt it will be right, as you didn’t guess ‘dragon’. Mainly because there wasn’t one but that doesn’t seem to matter. 

As I said, she doesn’t seem to grasp the basics of this game, and we’ve advised her grandparents not to play it with her anymore.