Board Games: A Better Lesson
One of the greatest things about being a nanny before having my own kids was the practice. Let’s talk board game rage.
Kyle loved playing Candy Land. He wanted to do it all day. That’s great, right? It’s a hilarious game. Little gingerbread-like children (ok, pretty clearly boys) make their way through the Candy Cane Forest and Molasses Swamp, past the Gum Drop Mountain, meeting Queen Frostine and Gloppy. There’s no strategy, because what happens to you depends on the draw of the cards and the spaces you land on. The game makes you take turns, talk about colors and counting, and think about candy. Kyle loved this game, and he could play it with me and even his little sister was old enough to play with help.
What he didn’t love was losing. When he lost, or was even stuck in the swamp, he’d get really angry, frequently flipping the board and throwing a tantrum. Do you remember being four or five years old? If you spend a lot of time with this age kid, you get it. It sucks to lose, or to be stuck. On an intellectual level, you sort of understand when an adult tells you it’s only fair, that sometimes you lose, and why should you always win and the other person always lose? But when it’s really happening, it’s just too much to handle and be a graceful good sport on top of it. Being a good sport comes when you can handle losing with calmness, and when the world doesn’t stack up against you.
I didn’t like any direction this was going. Let Kyle win, and he learns that his needs are paramount, above his sister, above his adults. That is not a good lesson for any child. Having him lose was teaching him that losing makes you mad (understandable), and then timed-out, destroying everybody’s day, including yours. The game itself teaches you that life is me-versus-you, and the whole exercise was quickly becoming something I didn’t want to spend any time doing.
Then I had an inspiration. I set up Candy Land. I dealt out the cards. I took out one little gingerbread boy. Kyle asked, “Where are the others?” I said that the gingerbread boy goes on the path he’s all alone, and he gets so sad and so mad because when he losing or being stuck that this time we were all going to be on his side. Now every one of our turns was going to work to get that kid all the way to King Kandy. We all howled when he lost a turn. We were all excited when he could move forward two purples. As a bonus, the games went quicker—they lasted about the right amount of time for young kids not to get bored. We were all nice to each other during the game, and we all cheered when he finally made it to the ice cream castle. Afterwards, nobody was crying, nobody was in time-out, and we could go on pleasantly with our day.
We still learned turns. We still learned colors. But more importantly, we learned to work as a team, help each other out, and to root for the little guy.