Getting There…And Going Back…Is Half the Fun

When I play with Lauren and Amelia, any game is fun.  For a while, anyway.  We all seem to get tired of games that don’t require the player to actually DO anything.  Take an old standby, like Chutes and Ladders.  You spin the wheel.  You move your piece.  Sometimes you go down a chute.  Sometimes you go up a ladder.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

The game is so devoid of decision or excitement that riding the longest chute (square 84) or the highest ladder (square 28…I play this too often) is preferable to actually WINNING THE GAME.  That’s Chutes and Ladders right – Amelia pouts when she is about to land on square 100 and win the game, because it means there is no chance of sliding up or down the game board.

Maybe that’s why the game has been popular with small children since the Bronze Age: kids just like the random possibility of something happening that is both different and pointless at the same time.  Adults prefer games that require either strategy and decision-making (like chess) or have real consequences based on random chance (like roulette).

Chutes and Ladders has neither.  Like the proverbial itsy-bitsy spider, players climb up, slowly or rapidly, until they fall down, or the game ends.  Nothing else happens.  It’s just like King of the Hill, minus the bruises and grass stains.

To me, Lauren and Amelia’s relative boredom with is a sign of progress; they are becoming more clever, and more social, as they enjoy games of increasing difficulty and variation. 

Can We All Get Along?

When I was a kid, every game involved inter-player competition, whether it be a race to the finish (like Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land), or a struggle for resources (like Monopoly) or a zero-sum strategy game (like Battleship).  Every game had a winner and a loser (or losers).

That seems to be changing.  More and more board games are based on cooperative play, rather than competition between players.  Games like Busytown, Lost Puppies, or Count Your Chickens (don’t worry…I had never heard of them either) require players to work together, or at least in parallel, towards an objective.  If the objective is reached, everybody wins.  If not, try again.

Some might decry this trend as more touchy-feely, P.C. nonsense; I’m not so sure.  Learning to work together and be mutually supportive are great skills for young kids to develop.  And the results – less fighting, more fun – speak for themselves.

Yet I wonder if we lose something in practicing real sportsmanship – how you treat another person in competition.  The thrill of relying on your own strategy, your own decisions, or your own skills is a unique experience.  So is learning to cope when your best efforts don’t always achieve the outcome you want.

And so today’s Count Your Chickens ally is tomorrow’s Connect Four adversary.  Maybe there’s a good lesson in that, too.

Tic-Tac-Yes-or-No?

Lauren enjoys playing Tic-Tac-Toe.  Almost anywhere, we can pull out the iPhone and play, or even grab a pencil and paper if we’re feeling nostalgic.  For kids, Tic-Tac-Toe is fun and fast-paced.  For an adult, it can quickly become tedious and tiresome.

That’s because (as most everyone knows) there are only a few basic strategies to winning the game.  Once you’ve mastered them, there’s really no point.  Every game, you make the same moves. If both players understand the strategy, every game is a tie.  Even Matthew Broderick knows that. 

My struggle was whether to explain the strategies to Lauren.  She loves winning (of course) but she also enjoys learning how things work, and establishing a set pattern.  But I didn’t want to steal the enjoyment she gets from playing an age-appropriate game.  Once she understood the pattern, would Tic-Tac-Toe still be fun?

Ultimately, I shared some tips with Lauren.  To my surprise (and my satisfaction) she used SOME of them, but continued to play the game her own way…even when it meant losing.  I was proud of her, and it taught me a lesson.  The enjoyment she gets from playing the game is not diminished by the overall outcome.  And she has the assertiveness to try things her own way just to see what happens.

As a result, Tic-Tac-Toe is still fun.  For her, anyway.

Down the Hills and 'Round the Bends...

Some girls are tomboys, who like to play with toys and games that are typically preferred by boys.  Not my girls…they bury the needle on the frilly-lacey-pinkish scale.  Tea parties, dress-up, princesses…their interests have always gravitated towards the traditional as far as playthings go.

Except for one thing – when Lauren and Amelia were smaller, they loved Thomas the Tank Engine toys.  The brightly-colored trains and outrageously-expensive wooden railroad tracks provided hours of entertainment for them (and for their dad, I must admit.)

While the videos about working hard and being a good friend were mildly entertaining (at least in a Nineteenth-Century-Britain, Industrial-Revolution sort of way), I was always curious about the specific appeal of Thomas the Tank Engine for our kids, especially since it was so different from their other interests.

This might be one reason.

From CNN:

“A study conducted in the United Kingdom found that autistic children were far more fascinated by the television series, "Thomas and Friends," than they were with other fictional characters.

“The study, by the National Autistic Society, summarized that the show held such appeal because of the clear facial expressions of the characters, the pacing of the program and the easy-to-follow story lines.”

Which makes sense – the (older) cartoons use models and limit on-screen movement to one or two elements at a time.  It’s narrated like a story, with one voice actor reading for every role.  And since every engine character has a different “face” for emotional expression (happy, angry, frightened, etc.), it is ideal for children who have difficulty processing visual or social cues.

I’m just thankful they never got into Barney.

To Beat or Not to Beat...

Have fun – it’s the “Prime Directive” of playing games with kids.  But play a few rounds, or hands, or matches, and you’ll soon run into a key dilemma for adults: how much effort do you put into winning?  Win too often and frustration can result, removing the child’s enjoyment of the game.  But win too little and you’re setting them up for future letdowns with the expectation that they be victorious every time, no matter what.

Some people possess an innate, almost pathological, desire to best others at whatever they choose to do.  I’d imagine Michael Jordan doesn’t worry about when to let his kids win.  I’ve never been that competitive.  Win some, lose some…it was all the same to me.

But teaching Lauren and Amelia how to win with respect, and how to react appropriately when they don’t, has been a unique challenge.  They don’t always understand that the end of a game isn’t permanent, and that losing once doesn’t mean defeat forever.  We try and strike a balance by celebrating the winner, and reminding the other of past games they’ve won (like the time Amelia stole ALL my cards in Go Fish). 

This is a good lesson for grown-ups, too.  Failure need not be permanent.  It’s become a cliché that you don’t fail unless you give up – but for kids, these concepts are still new.  Celebrating the accomplishment of others while preparing yourself to do better next time can be a great lesson in empathy and perseverance.

 So long as you don’t mind having your Fish stolen.  J