Nursery World - A Unique Child: Practice in pictures: You're joking!

A young child's delight in fooling or teasing an adult tells us a lot about what they know and helps them progress in making sense of their world, as Anne O'Connor demonstrates with this example.

Dad and Maddi (just two years old) are sitting on the sofa looking at a book. They are close together and both are focusing on the pictures, talking about them and using them for pretend play. Dad draws her attention to images on the page and asks her to name them. He soon realises that Maddi is deliberately giving him the wrong answers, and he throws his head back as he laughs and playfully accuses her of teasing him. Maddi continues the teasing and seems to mimic dad's body language as she instinctively throws herself back on the sofa and she laughs joyfully at her joke.

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