Wrong Game

There’s a little game I like to play with my kids. I call it “The Wrong Game.”

It’s a game where I’ll deliberately say something incorrect so that my kids will react. They’ll tell me the correct thing, but then I’ll act like I don’t understand and make them explain it to me more thoroughly until I “get it.”

For example, I was reading a book to them that had the word “robot,” and I kept intentionally mispronouncing it as “rowboat,” “rabbit,” or “reboot.” I acted like I didn’t understand the difference until they wrote down all four words and walked me through why they each sounded the way they did.

When you can teach something to someone – with patience and grace – that’s when it really internalizes. We “learn” a lot of things that we actually just memorize. We learn to drive a car by remembering the steps, not by understanding why the rules of the road exist or how an internal combustion engine actually works. But giving people the opportunity to teach, especially in a way that’s different from how they learned it themselves, is a wonderful way to approach true understanding.

I’ve found this same technique, applied in a less silly manner, works wonders with adults as well. If I really want to see if someone has absorbed something they’re trying to learn, I might say: “Okay, pretend I’m the new colleague you’re training next week, so I have no prior knowledge of this process. If I started by doing [this incorrect step], what would you tell me?” And then bam, the gears start turning in a whole new way.

The Wrong Game is often the right one – have fun playing!