One night, several years before I became a dad myself, my wife and I were babysitting our three-year-old niece, Erin. She had recently gotten the board game Pretty Pretty Princess for Christmas and wanted nothing more than to play it with us over and over… and over and over and over and over. I obliged, of course, because I’m a good uncle. And since the goal of this particular game is to collect and put on various pieces of jewelry, you know just how much of a good uncle I was!
Erin and I were bedecked and bedazzled with glittering plastic earrings, necklaces and bracelets, each of us needing only one more item-the game's lone tiara-to win. So when the number on the spinner brought Erin one space short of the winning square, she simply nudged her marker that extra bit, grabbed the tiara and declared herself the prettiest princess in the land.
Being a competitive little princess myself, I called Erin on her cheat and within seconds our fun little game had disintegrated into a pretty pretty crying fit, prompting my wife to scold: “You couldn't just let her have the stupid tiara? It's just a silly game for crying out loud!”
Now as my own daughter approaches board game age I find myself thinking back to that night, wondering how I would handle the same situation now. I know it was just a silly game-and Lord knows I would never openly admit to making a young child cry because I wanted to wear her tiara-but I couldn't help but wonder if following my wife's advice and letting my niece win was the right thing to do. Doesn't letting a kid win all the time, or even some of the time, give them a false sense of reality and ill-prepare them for when real competition arises? How are parents (and mean uncles) supposed to make board game competition realistic without every other bout of Pretty Pretty Princess ending in a tantrum?
To Win or Not To Win
Before you worry about whether or not to throw another game of Candy Land, Dr. Kal Heller Ph.D.-a child psychologist of forty years from Needham, Massachusetts-stresses that, to a child, especially younger children, playing games is more about spending time with the parent than it is about winning and losing. The games themselves are merely a context for parents to connect and build a relationship with their children.
That being the case, Heller says that letting your kid win all the time “is really being deceitful, and that's not the nature of any good relationship.” On the other hand, there's also no reason for parents to go to the other extreme and constantly beat their kids into the ground for the sake of “realistic competition.” Never forget that games, above all, are designed to be fun, and nobody (adults or children) wants to play if they know they're going to lose every single time.
With that in mind, there are several ways parents can foster those game-playing relationships without reducing their kids to tears and without having to say, in mock surprise, “Oh my gosh, you won again!”
Luck-(or chance)-based games like Candyland or Chutes and Ladders don't require players to make any decisions. You simply spin a spinner or draw a card, move to the space indicated and obey the rules of that particular space (move ahead three, slide down the chute, etc.). In games like these it's literally luck of the draw, putting all players, young and old, on equal footing.
There is really no reason to let a child win when playing games of chance. Simply letting chance play out allows both the child and the parent equal opportunities to experience victory and defeat. Of course, as with any instances of chance, there is always the chance that an aberration in probability will skew several games in the parent's favor. If “bad luck” has caused your child to lose several games in a row and you sense he's getting rattled, it's perfectly all right to make sure he wins the next time around, reinforcing his pleasure in the game.
Skill-based games like Memory, Checkers or Monopoly are different in that they require players to analyze their options and make decisions (Which card do I turn? Which way do I move my king?). Parents have an obvious advantage over younger kids in these games by mere virtue of their more developed intellect and analytical abilities. In games of skill there are several approaches a parent can take that will give their child a better chance of winning on their own without handing them each game on a silver platter.
