On letting kids win

[prog]

Somewhat confessional post I just made on a Board Game Geek list about ways to let your kids win at different games:

I agree with the spirit of this list but I beg caution and temperance from any parent wishing to employ it.

I remember my early childhood very well, and I am convinced that my ability to fully enjoy games was stunted and delayed by the fact that my parents and older brothers would always let me win at everything. After a while, they started to experiment with playing for real. I'd cry and carry on when I started to lose, and rather than teach me why losing didn't equate to some sort of existential failure , they quickly gave up and just let me win more.

What ultimately developed was the creature we all despise - a sore loser. My young peers quickly discovered that I was a terrible person to play games with, even though I always wanted to play games. When I was a little kid I'd try punching out anyone who out-Monopolied me, and even as late as college I'd storm away from a chessboard or even a video game when things were going poorly. I finally grew out of it by my mid-twenties, just in time to discover the secret world of non-Hasbro games.

I hope this doesn't come across as a "I blame my parents for everything" post. I love my family and realize that they were only trying to help me be happy. But since they didn't really care about games, figuring that they were mainly tools to mollify one's children, their use of them was well-intentioned but misguided.

Since the parents reading this know better than mine did about games, and have an active interest in instilling a lifelong love for them in their children, I urge that they be very careful when it comes to letting the little ones win. I encourage taking a controlling role in gameplay with your very young children, but I urge that you do so in order to let them learn about both winning and losing, and talk to them about what both conditions mean.

Comments

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I hate when people throw games to kids. I think we've talked about this. It totally counts as lying, and lying to kids is never cool. And plus, you're right. It does create sore losers. My father and grandfather use to whip our butts at board games. It taught us how to play for real and it also made us feel brilliant when we actually started beating them.

My other thought is this. Maybe it's important for little kids to play games with other little kids. I played a lot of games with my brother and cousins, and we were all about the same age. (Usually with some adults thrown in the mix.) Adults can't throw a game as well when there are multiple kids, because how do you pick which kid wins? Some kids always have to lose if there are multiple kids. I think this is healthy.

Lying to kids

[prog.livejournal.com]

I'm quite against Santa Claus and all his faerie ilk too, though I've promised my parent-friends that I won't go knocking down the lie for their own kids.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I agree with you, but, playing devil's advocate here, maybe lying to your kid is the best way to teach them how to deal with being lied to (especially by authority figures).

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

I think kids probably get lied to enough in other places that you could be honest with them and they'd still learn the how-to-deal-with-being-lied-to lesson.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Lying to kids is totally cool.

I don't just mean that facetiously. We lie to kids when we says things like "You can't subtract 3 from 2, because 3 is bigger." Well, of course you can. But there's a point in a child's development when it's just plain easier to lie.

The question becomes, what lies is it OK to tell when?

[prog.livejournal.com]

I don't know if that's a lie, though. It's more like a dodge, being true if framed in certain ways. In this context it's basically shorthand for "You can't subtract 3 from 2 (and end up with an answer that's meaningful or even comprehensible to you right now)." Perfectly valid, says I.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

We lie to kids when we says things like "You can't subtract 3 from 2, because 3 is bigger."

But no one would ever say something like that. I mean really. What possible context would require such a statement?

There are loads of mathematical concepts kids might not get, but you just say something like, "There's a way that subracting three from two can be made meaningful, but it's too complicated for me to explain" (not, note well, "it's too complicated for you to understand"--the concept may well be within the child's grasp, and who am I to say otherwise, and there may well be ways of explaining it to that child that would work, but if I have to fall back on this kind of answer I'm sure I don't know what they are.)

Why anyone would tell a kid (or anyone) something so transparently false as "you can't subtract three from two" is beyond me. At the very least you'd tell them, "You can't subtract three from two YET", and make that explicit, because it is basically a narrative hook to keep them wondering how to do it eventually.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

But no one would ever say something like that. I mean really. What possible context would require such a statement?

Grade school. Seriously, that's what teachers say. Your paraphrases may be reasonable, but they aren't what's used.

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

I agree that kids get lied to in school quite a bit, but that doesn't make it right. There are better ways of relating difficult concepts to kids, and some teachers also use those. So one might say something concrete such as, "If there are two duckies in a pond you can only take two away. You can't take away three duckies because there aren't three there."

And for instances where you can't think of how to make an answer honest, I agree with radtea. Just tell them you can't explain it. That works if you're just too tired, as well. Kids are exhausting with their "whys" and "how comes" so it's fair to tell them you'll answer the question later. And that reduces the temptation to lie to make things easier.

Of course, I don't have kids. But I do enjoy the back seat parenting. :)

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

great post

thanks for the link

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

I love this list. :) For the age being discussed and the type of games listed, I found it great and helpful. It reminds me of an article I saw a while back that talked about how below a certain age, children of either gender often didn't like their dads as playmates. Why? Because a lot of dads play to win even with very young kids, even in physical pursuits that a) don't need a winner to be fun, and b) aren't even close in terms of ability.

I apriciate where you're coming from, but since I have back to back memories of constantly losing games in school that make me far worse of a sore loser than you, I'd advise caution in universalizing either experience. And the list includes advice for making losing not a big deal and when to reduce the strategies.

[keimel.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure who came up with it, but when we started playing with the games here, which we should have started sooner - they love them, G-man started doing "Oh, you winned first!" At which point we continued the game and "I winned second!!!!" and so on. So, in a lot of the games, we can get away with all of us winning.

I will fully and freely admit that I cheat at Chutes and Ladders. Dear God, I can't imagine a worse fate than having to 'win second' by having to legally get up those frikkin ladders. And the last row is just the row of death for chutes. So, if he's already won, which is often, I'll cheat my way to the end, just because I want it to end. He doesn't notice when I do this because he's already won is usually paying much less attention to me just finishing up. But I finish, cause, well, that's how we play - otherwise I can "winned second!"

I also let him get the match of Zurg in Toy Story memory game. He just loves to get the Zurg match, so I'll let him. Of course, he usually just wins outright with memory anyhow.

Of course, with kids of my kids age, there is a measure of making sure they win sometimes - but that's rarely a problem, because so many of the young kid games are purely chance - so they do win. It's just the odds, they have to. So - we don't have to throw it to let them win. They win outright. And damned if my half-sister-in-law didn't nearly mop the floor with all the adults in risk. I think she was about 14 or so when she did that.

The odds in young kids games balance it. The kids will win some of the time. I don't see much need for pointers on cheating. That just doesn't make sense. If I end up throwing a game, it's not because I want him to win, but because I just want the blessed game to end sooner, as I see some people mention in that thread on BGG. My kids win at games and they lose at games. If they lose, I usually don't mind trying to play another one, just for the sake of letting him go to bed with a checkmark in the win column, but he does earn the wins he gets.

Of course, the odds in other games are not nearly as balanced, as they start introducing strategy. There's precious little strategy in the apple wormy game, but as the boys learn more, I tell them why they should switch apples with one person instead of another. It's getting there.

And yes, when he loses, he sometimes cries. Sometimes a lot. But we tell him that sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. That's how games go. And he keeps coming back to play - which is probably the best barometer of all.

;)

[prog.livejournal.com]

What you're doing with G now is exactly what my folks should have done! See, gamer parents are awesome. (Well, my parents are also awesome, just not so much with the games.)

Chutes and Ladders is such a crap game, though, especially for the poor grown-up. It's even more randomly capricious than Candy Land! If I found myself having to teach games to a youngun I'd pick something else. (There's discussion along these lines on the list I linked to.)

[keimel.livejournal.com]

Am always interested in more games in their age bracket. I'll check the thread with more brain cycles again.

And FWIW, the younger one also makes up games. "Well I want to play this game" "that's Uno (for kids) and you're not playing Uno. " "It's okay, I made a match" "Oh, so it's memory with UNO cards, okay, I can do that"

;)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with you, and, as someone else noted, many kids games are sufficient chance-based that as long as nobody cheats, you don't have to throw games for them.

However, I do think there is value in general in backing off when playing with someone new of any age. I find people who are so competitive that they revel in winning even when everyone else is still trying to figure out the rules to be pretty annoying. When I play a game with a newbie and they're okay with it, I help them out, point out better moves they might have missed, explain why I am doing what I'm doing, etc.

In practice, this means I lose most "teaching games" since, say if there are three of us and one is new, odds are the third is simply playing to win so since I hurt my position by helping the newbie, Three wins. S'fine by me, though. I'd rather enjoy the game and lose, and then have a new person who is more likely to want to play again than if they'd simply been ignorantly trounced by both of us.

When I was a kid, my dad never let us win at Trivial Pursuit, but we did modify the rules to make things more difficult for him. For example, there were various times when we were allowed to try to find what we felt was a more difficult question. I don't have a problem with open handicaps of that sort because otherwise, things can get way too lopsided.

I am going on way too long here so I'll stop now.