Wait, What? — Catch the Silly Slip

A listening game in which you say things that are almost right and the child pounces on what does not make sense. You chat about the day or tell a well-known story and quietly slip in something impossible or mixed up — “Then I put my shoes in the fridge and went to bed.” The child shouts “Wait, what?” and puts it right.

  1. Explain the game. “I’m going to tell you some things. Sometimes my words will come out silly. If it doesn’t make sense, say Wait, what?”
  2. Start with obvious slips in single sentences. “We eat soup with a fork.” “The dog said meow.” “I brushed my teeth with a banana.”
  3. Mix in plenty of sensible sentences — about half — so the child truly has to listen instead of shouting every time.
  4. Ask for the repair. “What should I have said?” Any sensible fix counts.
  5. Move the slips into a familiar story. Retell Goldilocks or the child’s own morning with two or three slips hidden in it: “…and the porridge was too hot, so she put on her swimsuit.”
  6. Try subtler slips that only clash with something said earlier: “Sam had no pets. …Then Sam fed his cat.”

Variation: the child becomes the storyteller and tries to slip one past you; or play “Does it make sense?” with thumbs up and thumbs down for a quieter version.

Requirements

  • Space: Anywhere — table, car, bath, bed
  • Surface: Any
  • Materials: None
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; a small group can race to call it first
  • Supervision: Full — the adult is the speaker

Rationale & Objective

Good listeners do more than take words in; they check whether what they hear makes sense and notice when it does not. This is called comprehension monitoring. Elizabeth Skarakis-Doyle’s studies used exactly this kind of task — planting violations in familiar stories — and showed that young children’s reactions to them are an early sign of monitoring, and that preschoolers with language impairment score lower on such a monitoring task than their peers. Kim and Phillips reported that a few minutes a day of practice at spotting inconsistencies in short spoken stories improved pre-kindergarteners’ monitoring. The skill matters because a child who notices “that didn’t make sense” can ask for help — the EYFS goal of asking questions “to clarify their understanding” — while a child who does not notice simply misses the meaning. Later, the same habit is what tells a reader to stop and reread.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: laughs at very obvious slips (animals making the wrong sound) but lets most others pass; may shout “Wait, what?” at sensible sentences too
  • Developing: catches impossible single sentences reliably and offers a fix; misses slips buried inside a story
  • Proficient: catches slips inside a familiar story and repairs them; rarely false-alarms on sensible sentences
  • Advanced: catches slips that only clash with something said earlier; plants convincing slips for you; starts saying “that doesn’t make sense” in everyday conversation

Safety Notes

  • There is no physical risk
  • Keep slips silly, never scary or about the child’s real worries
  • Some children dislike “wrong” things and get upset rather than amused — begin with clearly comic slips and let them be the one to trick you
  • Do not use the game to tease a child about their own speech mistakes
  • If a child almost never notices when instructions or stories stop making sense, and rarely asks for anything to be repeated or explained, mention it to a speech-language therapist

Hints

  • Playfulness: act astonished at your own slip — “Shoes in the fridge? Did I really say that?” — and let the child be the clever one
  • Sustain interest: slip-ups in a favourite book the child knows by heart are irresistible; so are slips in songs (“Twinkle, twinkle, little sock”)
  • Common mistake: making every sentence silly. Without ordinary sentences in between there is nothing to listen for
  • Limited space: needs nothing at all — a perfect car, queue or bath game
  • Cross-domain: humour and absurdity build flexible thinking; holding back until a real slip comes exercises impulse control; fixing the sentence is expressive-language practice
  • Progression: impossible single sentences → slips in a known story → slips in a new story → slips that contradict an earlier sentence → child plants the slips

Sources

  • Skarakis-Doyle, E. (2002), “Young children’s detection of violations in familiar stories and emerging comprehension monitoring,” Discourse Processes
  • Skarakis-Doyle, E. & Dempsey, L. (2008), “The detection and monitoring of comprehension errors by preschool children with and without language impairment,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
  • Kim, Y.-S.G. & Phillips, B. (2016), “Five minutes a day to improve comprehension monitoring in oral language contexts,” Topics in Language Disorders
  • UK EYFS Early Learning Goal — Listening, Attention and Understanding (asks questions to clarify understanding)
  • Head Start ELOF — Attending and Understanding (Language and Communication domain)