A story about how I childishly got serious and retorted to a five-year-old

Before the children go to bed, it is our family's routine for my husband to read them a book.

Previously, he used to read the same book to my son and daughter together, but at some point, we started reading to them separately one by one. This is because the reading levels of my son and daughter have changed, and differences have emerged in their preferences for stories.

My son likes adventure stories. Stories where dragons and knights appear and they solve problems while fighting. My daughter, as expected, seems to like stories where the protagonist is a girl or where cute animals like cats and rabbits appear.

The order of reading is determined by whoever gets ready for bed first. If they want to be read to first, they quickly change into their pajamas and brush their teeth.

Once both reading sessions are finished, it is lights out. The children go to sleep in their respective beds.

During the waiting time before my turn starts and after it ends, my son and daughter each spend time alone with me.

My son loves to snuggle with me during this time. He crawls into bed and talks about what happened that day at close range. Since the books my daughter reads aren't that long, it's a short time of less than five minutes, but my son cherishes this time.

On the other hand, what my daughter does during this time depends on her mood that day, so sometimes she brings a Japanese book and says, 'Read this,' and other times she plays with cards. My daughter likes to be completely in charge, so I let her do as she pleases.

Yesterday, it was time for a guessing game invented by my daughter. My daughter asks the questions and I answer.

It seems my daughter wanted to use a special pen she received from a friend a little while ago. When you use this pen, nothing is visible even if you write on paper. When you shine the light attached to the other end of the pen, the ink appears. The flow is that I guess what my daughter wrote with this pen, and then we check the answer by shining the light later.

My daughter proudly explained the rules and then immediately asked her first question.

Question 1. 'What picture did I draw?'

Of course, I am not allowed to see the process of her drawing. So, there are no clues at all. It is pure guesswork. But I guessed that it was probably one of the pictures she always draws, and I...

'A cat.'

She said that was wrong, so I kept listing things like Mommy's face, a flower, and a heart.

Here, a rule was added: I can only answer three times. And with the notification of this new rule, I was declared out on the first question. By the way, the answer to this question was

Mount Fuji.

That's tough.

I have never seen her draw a picture of Mount Fuji.

Next, Question 2. 'Which alphabet letter is it?'

Since I can only answer three times, this time I proceed cautiously. I thought it might be 'M' which appears in the spelling of Mommy, but that was wrong. Is it 'P' for Papa? That was also wrong. As a hint,

she showed me the shape of her mouth when pronouncing this alphabet letter. It looked like an 'ah' mouth no matter how I looked at it. 'Ah'?

When I gave up, the answer was, surprisingly, U. It seems she was making the mouth shape for the pronunciation of [ʌ].

Sorry, isn't this too difficult?

I was a mother bewildered by a series of unexpected, difficult questions. However, my daughter completely left me behind and continued with her quiz.

Question 3. "Which mammal is it?"

Oh. Mammals, huh. I felt like I could handle this even without hints, so I attacked boldly.

Human. Wrong.
Monkey. Wrong.
Cat. Wrong.

My baseless confidence became my undoing, and I was easily defeated.

When I heard the answer, it was "saber-toothed cat".

How would I know that!!

I couldn't help but retort to my five-year-old daughter in all seriousness.

My daughter looked triumphant, as if she had gotten the better of me.

Thank you for reading this far.
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