The Labeling Game

When I was little my mom would play the “labeling game” with my brother and me. I don’t remember playing it, but apparently we loved it and would ask to play it often.

You can’t really see in this picture, because it’s a picture of a picture taken from far away…but my mom had little flashcards with body parts written on them. She would call out the names of the body parts and we’d let her label our bodies for us. Feet, legs, knees, arms, elbows, stomach, face, etc.

I thought Rachel might enjoy playing this game, too, since she is very much into naming body parts right now. So I got out some scratch paper, wrote a ton of words down, cut them up and asked Rachel if she wanted to play a game with me.

She was a very willing participant at first, lying down on the floor and showing me where her knees were when I called out “Where’s your knee?”

When I went to put the label on her knee, however, she completely wigged out. Each subsequent body part was the same.

“Do you want to show me where your belly button is?”

“Nooo! No, no, no!”

We ended up labeling baby doll, instead. Rachel thought this was much more fun and she was really pretty good at it, too. Apparently she just wanted to be the labeler.

Baby doll was an excellent labelee because she was completely still the whole time. And she didn't fuss one bit.

We tried playing it again this morning and Rachel was a little more comfortable with the idea. Each time I called out a body part, Rachel would take the label from me, hold it, momentarily, on herself, and then would put it, more permanently, on baby doll.

Maybe one day she’ll enjoy this game as much as David and I did as children.