When I play “Connect 4” with the girls, I generally let them win every other game, since I don’t want them to feel that playing with me is hopeless, but I also don’t want them to expect to win all the time.
(This is unlike “Memory,” a game that they can always beat me at, no matter how hard I try. I remember being good at “Memory” when I was their age. Has my short-term memory degraded that much since then, or were the grown-ups I played back then letting me win?)
Last week Maddox asked if I’d teach her checkers. We don’t have a checker set, but we have a chess set and a Connect 4 set, so if you combine those two, presto chango, checkers! We’ve played three games of checkers so far, and I’ve let Maddox win two.
Today Maddox noticed that there were chess pieces in the box we take the board out of, and asked if I’d teach her chess. I don’t have anything against teaching her chess, except that she’d find it hard to remember what all the pieces do, which would make playing chess less fun for us both. So I said “maybe we should wait until you’re a little better at checkers before you learn chess.” And Maddox replied, quite logically, “I won two games of checkers!” Touché!
So I’d have to teach Maddox chess, except that she pointed out the “Ages 8 and up” written on the chess box, and she’s only 7. I guess I’ll teach her chess after her next birthday. :-)
P.S. Every time I let one of them win, I think of that moment in “To Kill a Mockingbird” when Scout learns for the first time that her father, who she beats in checkers all the time, used to be the town checkers champion and has been letting her win.
I don’t have anything against teaching her chess, except that she’d find it hard to remember what all the pieces do, which would make playing chess less fun for us both.
Draw her a crib sheet, art genius. If you can convince her that it’s OK to defy the Box Police.
I am supportive of “letting” the kids win some of the time, otherwise it is no fun for them. Candyland with 3 & 4 year olds is easy to “loose”. There is plenty of time when they are older and more emotionally prepared, for them to win or loose under their own merits.
How do you purposely win or lose Candyland? Isn’t it entirely chance?
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How do you purposely win or lose Candyland? Isn’t it entirely chance?
I guess you could cheat. :-p
I think her point was that because it’s entirely chance, if you play a bunch of games you’ll lose about half of them just by chance.
But I just find all those games so boring! I’m much more engaged playing checkers or connect 4, even if I’m purposely losing. And I’m really eager for them to someday get better at strategy games, so I’ll have more people to play Settlers of Catan with.
If they can talk, they are old enough for fantasy RPG.
Candyland teaches kids important lessons about cheating.
I’d not worry about chess being difficult to learn. Any child who wants to learn chess, will easily learn chess. Certainly any child who is 4+ and have experience playing simpler games.
Start with only the rooks and the king. Then add one additional officer for each game you play, until every piece is known.
Magnus has played chess since he was 5, and I dont’ think that’s uncommon or extraordinary in any way.
Ok a little ahead of Maddox’s time, but here’s a wonderful fourth-grade game: Multiplication Tic Tac Toe.
I used to let my girl beat me from time to time. Now she beats me EVERY time. It’s educational; I’m getting schooled left and right.
It is easy to “lose” at Candyland, I developed a good technique. Say you roll the dice and get a five, you take your playing piece and thump it real hard on the playing board and count out loud to five and you bang the playing piece up and down on the colored markers but you only advance the piece 3 or for moves ahead. The kids hear you count out loud to 5 but they are not yet quick enough to see you didn’t actually advance it exactly five squares on the board :)
So I count out loud and bang my piece, but on a couple squares on the board I double tap the same square. Works every time but only when they are around 3 or 4. By age five they are smarter, it they catch me at age five I simply admit to making a mistake and move the piece correctly. Double Tap in Candyland works like a charm. I only ever cheat on my moves never the moves of the kids. Is this to confusing the way I described it?
I’ve taught two kids chess – one five, the other eight. They remember the piece moves as well as adults (of which I’ve lost count of the number I’ve taught).
Way to give your kids an overinflated ego. Who’s to blame when they go into the real world and find out they’re nothing more than average? Maybe they won’t find out at all, and instead wonder why they’re suddenly failing? If this isn’t helicopter parenting, I don’t know what is.
Candyland doesn’t have dice. You pick a card with a color, and move to the next space of that color. You can “lose” at Chutes and Ladders that way, though.
We used a “teaching” chess set which has each piece’s name printed on it, but more importantly, indicates with arrows how it moves. Our daughter learned to play chess well before she could read. (My main motivation in getting it, though, was to have pieces too large to choke on–chess boards & pieces seem to fascinate toddlers.)
Right…because people totally keep doing this for the kid’s whole life, rather than while they’re just getting the hang of the game. I assume that if your kid has a computer game, they’re forbidden from playing on any setting but the hardest because they have to have their little egos beaten down and learn that they’re average, right?
COMPUTER game. What, are you trying to raise a generation of communist freeloaders? My kids don’t even get the store-bought game until they present a perfect chess game complete with formal proofs of the theoretical correctness of every move. And even then I make them hand-carve the pieces.
They don’t get to have a computer version until they’ve wired the machine up themselves using the iron ore they dug out of the backyard.
Less facetiously, there is no need to cheat at Candyland in order to produce wins for the children. Candyland is purely random; there are no decisions to make. Play n games and the expected distribution of wins for each player will converge on n / p.
You’d have to cheat at Monopoly, but I always play Monopoly for blood. If the little bastards want to win, they can learn about probability the hard way.