To Cheat Or To Let Cheat
My children are new to the world of games. They have a V Smile learning game system that they can play once in a while and they have a few board games that we play together. They love to play especially my daughter who perfectly sets up the board and places the cards in neat piles.
Last night after dinner, we played a rousing game of Candy Land, one of my favorites. A couple of turns into it, my daughter got a card with a dot on it, which means (for you non C.L. playing people) you have to stay on that color until you pick another card with that same color on it. She denied that was what it was.
Keep in mind she has played this game about 50 times and knows the rules, she just didn’t want to stay on the blue square.
Then she tried to cheat again, at which point I told her, it was ok if she didn’t win, you can’t win every time and the game was still young. Look at me I am all the way at the end and I am not crying. I explained that nobody likes to play with a poor loser or winner.
On one hand she is only four, she wants to win, I get that. Her twin brother wants to win too, but he is not crying. Should I look the other way when she cheats? Should I make sure to catch her cheating and tell her to stop it? If everyone looks the other way when a child cheats to win or only plays games they know they will win, I think that is a great disservice to my child. In the real world nobody will do that for them.
Winning is great but just playing the game is also just as great.
Moms, please help me out!
kids, preschoolers, children, families, kid’s games, board games, parenting, parenting kids, parenting twins, twins, moms
May 30th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Under no circumstances whatsoever should you let her cheat.
You can change the rules before the game begins, and give her advantages before the game begins, but not during the game.
The single most important lesson of a board game is learning how to win and lose gracefully. That’s it. That’s the pinnacle. There are, of course, many other great lessons, but if you break this one, you do a great disservice to your daughter.
The only thing you have to balance is that she may not want to play at all if she doesn’t win occasionally, which is why you should play easy games to start with, or give her a handicap. After all, it’s no fun to lose all the time. But it’s also not fun to play against a cheater, and ultimately not fun to win through cheating.
But once the game starts, either you persevere or you resign. If not now, then when?
I have a number of articles about board gaming on my site (jergames.blogspot.com). Check on the sidebar for one about playing with your kids.
Good luck, and instill those values early!
Yehuda Berlinger
May 30th, 2007 at 10:27 am
My son is one of those that if you abbreviate the rules the first time they are explained b/c of simplicity, he will never adapt to the actual rules. Therefore, if I give him all the rules up front and make him follow them, he sticks to them without fault and no one else gets by with less than that. I applaud his memory.
However, he is a poor loser. It doesn’t matter if he came in 2nd or 10th, to him he wants only to win.
I’m guessing that your daughter’s intent wasn’t necessarily to cheat, but to win. It is very important to stress the fun during the game and that the actual “winning” of the game be rather anticlimatic: “Oh, darn. The game is over…”
Make her stick to the rules now. “Give them an inch and they will take a mile.” Because my son is not allowed to get away with any slight of hand in games, I know that when I’m outside gardening that he is not inside eating all the cookies and fruit snacks. It’s because he respects The Rules.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:45 pm
My parents didn’t let me cheat nor did they let me win. So yeah, I lost a lot, but that was never the point of playing. I mean, YES, we loved winning and we are a very obnoxious lot when it comes to winning, but really, games are all about the “playing”.
My son is only 19 months old, so we aren’t quite to your level of game-playing. I do plan on not letting him win and not letting him cheat. If I catch him cheating, I’m just going to tell him straight out that makes it no fun then when you win because you didn’t REALLY win, now did ya?
I did try to cheat, of course, as a little kid, but always found that it lessened my win so I learned that way not to cheat. Even now, when I play with my canasta group, I HATE it when another player isn’t careful with their cards because it takes the fun out of it.
Food for thought - when you catch her cheating, you could point out that she did cheat but still continue playing. Then, when/if she wins or gets a really good move, you could point out that it didn’t really count for much because she had cheated and that “wow, that sort of takes the fun out of it, eh?”.