4.5yr old playing dumb?

[twinklingfairy]

My DD is showing interest in learning her letters and starting to read the odd word.
But she plays dumb, for fun. Pretending not to know a letter when I know she knows. In order that we are stuck on a word for longer and longer.
I try to remain calm and either stop, which gets squeals of distress at the very idea that we will put the book away, or move onto another word, coming back to it later.
We came back to it today, at her request. Did a couple of other words, but then hit back on 'rabbit' or 'tiger' (same page on the wee work book). The letter she refuses to admit to knowing is 'i'
We went over the word nice and slow so that she could hear the sounds, then I asked what is this letter 'r' 'a' 'b' , a wee smirk, and... 't' she says, skipping the 'i'.
I laughed it off and went over it slowly again, she said the 'i' but when I slowed it down to see if she recognised the letter, she refused again to say 'i'

Why!?????

I don't get it. It is not the first time that she has pulled this stunt of kidding on she doesn't know but refusing to stop the game until I am losing my rag!!

I want to HE, but if we can't get over this kind of thing, how can I?

She wants to play the game, cries out if I try to stop or change the page or the word and yet refuses to say the letter that we both know she knows.
I feel I am stuck between a rock and hard place and the end result is inevitable. A mind blowing frustration for me that can only end in tears for both of us.

I think my usual answer to why a 4 year old does anything applies here - "Because she can!" If you know she knows, how about just glossing over it - "that's right 'rabbit'" and then move on. She's just being contrary because small children like the fact that they can do something the opposite of what you want. In a few weeks, she'll probably have found some other way of winding you up, so don't worry too much about this one.

Stop the game every time she does it, for at l;east 15 minutes, no matter what the carry one.

I don't know the answer but I have a 4.5 year old dd who is very similar. She does it with words sometimes but mainly other stuff. And its not just with me either, last term at swimming she had her teacher believing that she couldn't swim, and then in the last 2 lessons miraculously swum 10m +, when she does that every week when we go swimming outside of lessons....

It seems to me you are thinking of education as something different to the rest of life, and this annoying habit of your daughter's as something specific to HE. It isn't.

What would you do if the way she played Barbies always wound you up, or she always did major dawdling which made her late to Brownies?

If it were me, I might play along and try not to care ("Oh, here's another of those letters with a dot over it. You always say you don't know that letter. I'll read it, shall I? It's 'i'.")

Or I might tell her that it annoys me when she leaves letters out, and I'm not willing to read with her if she's going to do that. I don't indulge my kids in every game they want to play, whether it's Barbies or let's-learn-to-read.

I'm pretty sure my 18 year old would say the same about me playing dumb. There's stuff he's showed me about computing which I only really understand and remember while he's actually showing me. I know this really winds him up because he thinks he's explaining it really well, and each time I hope I'll remember the pesky forgettable bits but I never do. There are just some things I'm really not confident to say I "know", because I don't "know" them nearly as well as I "really know" some other things. If that makes sense?

I am a lot calmer about it now.
When it is a thing that has happened I can be all calm and say, next time I will just stop or gloss over, but when you are in the middle of it and she is crying at my stopping or glossing over is not working for me (ok truth, glossing over woudl probably mean leaving it be, I didn't do that. We kinda get stuck in the cycle)
I tried telling her to stop the game she was playing, it was going to make me cross and that we would stop the reading, but she was stuck by that point, unable to say the letter.

No, you are right it is not specific to HE, but I think that I am probably over thinking on the whole HE, so every time I feel I am failing to work well with her, I fear that HE won't be best, maybe school will be.
I remember, now, another instance when she did this and it was when she had to say sorry to her GD for something or other, but she refused. The more she refused the more she was unable to say it IYSWIM. She was 2.5 maybe, maybe even younger. It got to the point where she couldn't say hello even. She just stopped talking to him altogether for about 2 weeks, until she finally got to a point where she could get beyond it.
But it took quite a bit before she finally relented.

Why does she do that?
How do you get so stuck that even when you really want to say it (whatever it may be) you just can't. It gets totally stuck in her throat. Even when she sees me getting more and more cross. Still she just can't get it beyond her throat??

Oh, my DD You have never met a dawdler like her!
And she goes into wee dreams......Goodness, the staring she can do
but when she is on it, boy is she.

Would you pretending the i didn't exist too goad her into pointing it out?

I totally get that Fiona, but there is a difference between you not remembering (perhaps step by step notes? I found they really helped when I was figuring out computer programmes in new jobs) and my saying 'This is the letter 'i', what letter is that?
I can be like that with stuff sometimes, find it really hard for it to sink in, or my mind just goes completely blank.
If someone asks me a simple sum to do, I can just panic and be unable to do it for fear that I will look a complete plank for being a grown woman who can do simple sums. But in the peace of my own home, it is as easy as pie.
Of course I can add, but not when someone is watching and waiting.

That might sound like what DD is doing (see, she is just like me) but not when she can immediately answer it but then refuses on the second go. That is a choice and a V annoying one.

sigh, I am sure it is probably me who needs to figure out a better way of dealing with it instead of getting wound up.

hmm, but how can we read at all if we both can't recognise the letter i?
Though I guess I could be saying, 'oh we don't know that word cos it's got that letter in it, you know the one you don't know. oh well............'

To me it sounds as if the sudden rage is the problem. In our house it is to do with toothbrushing. You would have thought that by age 13 ds2 would have got into a peaceful routine of just doing it either before I mention it in the evening or soon after I do remind him. But no!

For us I have to make sure that no action gets between the relationship between me and him. If I were to act as if I prefer regular toothbrushing above my regard for him as a person, it all goes horribly wrong. He feels unloved and hated and shows it, and the teeth don't get brushed either. His stims come back and his overall anxiety levels rise too.

I have to be the one to regulate the rage levels by looking into my own heart, not by blaming my son. I hope this helps.

My almost-2-year-old does this too. (Not with letters, he always likes to pretend the lion in a certain book is a dog!). He's just playing a joke and really enjoying the fact that it gets a reaction - whether its a good reaction or a negative one. With me, I like to laugh at it with him and tell him how clever he is for playing a joke and kidding me and he loves the fun of that and moves onto another 'joke' as soon as one occurs to him. I think your daughter is doing the same thing. Enjoy it, she's a bright little thing if she's manipulating jokes.

How about just dropping reading for a little while? She is still very young - she doesn't have to read.

Read to her, by all means, but otherwise just do other things and wait to see what she'll think of next ...