Friday was my strawberry day. I got to the fields just a bit after 6 a.m. and was a little surprised to see a mother/father/daughter combo in the strip next to me. 6 a.m. is normally not a kid-friendly time; I know I would never have dragged Child at that time of day. (Of course, after she turned seven or eight, I never dragged her berry-picking again.)
The young kid in the next row was adamant that her dad (not her mom, just her dad) get every single good strawberry on their side. She let him know, in a fairly loud voice, when he had missed one. She would then pick it and show it to him before putting it into their flat. The rate at which she was finding good berries led me to think that Dad was doing it on purpose. Basically keeping her busy and allowing her to think she was “winning”.
When YA was young, I did occasionally let her win at some games. Yahtzee, Cribbage, Aggravation – all those were fairly easy to lose. Monopoly was a little harder because she could spot if I was doing something stupid. Same with Checkers and Risk. It wasn’t constant – just every now and then so she wouldn’t lose interest. My dad NEVER let us win; in fact he sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to keep us from winning. He thought it was a good lesson for us to learn how to lose – that classic “character-building” thing.
Eventually I didn’t need to let her win anymore and it was about that time that she came home from daycare wanting the game “Mancala”. It looked interesting so I got her a set and then lost every single game we ever played. It took me forever to even figure out the rules and I never did really master it. I think we will have it downstairs but it hasn’t been out of the box in years!
Have you ever purposely lost?
Trail Baboon 
I spent the day yesterday with two of my grandkids. Their Mom was driving the oldest one to a writer’s camp and their Dad was working.
Theirs is a big game family. They must own just about every game ever produced and all the family participates, even the six year old, even when the game is stipulated for older players. And he does fine. He can absorb all the rules and he develops his own strategies, so that even against his parents and older siblings, who wouldn’t hesitate to trounce him, he often wins.
He and I were playing a couple of card games. He had to teach them to me, as I rarely play cards or any games, for that matter. He was consistently winning. I wasn’t purposely losing but I wasn’t perhaps as cutthroat as I might have been if I cared about winning. There’s a gray area where a really stupid move would be too obvious, even to a sharp six-year-old, but where one can choose the less aggressive of two alternatives without blatantly throwing the game. I might have done that.
Anyway, as we were wrapping up our series of games, my grandson commented, “You do surprisingly well for a really old person.”
LikeLiked by 4 people
LOL! thanks.
LikeLike
ooh, that stings!
LikeLike
What stings is the implicit expectation. Bill
LikeLiked by 1 person
that’s where I get reprimanded by him for calling him a rotten little shit
LikeLiked by 3 people
Sure. Especially with very young kids. It’s always more fun to see the pure joy on their faces if they “beat you” in a foot race. And young kids don’t remember something like that. After about age 7 or 8, you’re not doing them any favors by letting them win. Don’t rub a win in their faces, but let them know that age and experience are keys to winning at anything, but sometimes luck is also involved.
Chris in Owatonna (having trouble with WP and not getting daily emails–working on it)
LikeLiked by 4 people
I can’t remember a specific time now, but I know I’ve done that on occasion. We were never a board game kind of family – much more into our books. I can see where board games are relationship and character builders but that’s not the family I grew up in.
I was lousy at team sports so if I sacrificed a point or fumbled a ball it was really because I was that terrible at it. My friends often played volleyball at the Stone House back in the mid-‘80s. No one wanted me on their team! So I sat around the bonfire with the other musicians and learned to play mandolin. I think I mad the better choice.
I’m just not very competitive.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, someone has to post something about the Strawberry Patch dolls from the 80s…
I’m sure I (subtly) let Joel win at something, but not too often… And we took the game Sets (very complicated to explain) out to Ukiah, and the 14-year-old had it in seconds, trounced the rest of us.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Woops, meant to add this:
Strawberry Shortcake Dolls a short history – World Collectors Net
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember laying checkers with my grandfather back when I was little. He be beating me so severely so early that he’d put two additional checkers on top of his kings just to rub it in. I’d ask what that was all about and he’d say he wasn’t sure I was noticing those were kings. He thought he’d help me to keep from getting jumped again.
now I’m the grandpa and Ari age 6 is a game guy. He loves concentration , tic tac toe, candyland ,we pay fun games like dropping a dime on a spot on the sidewalk or lagging for quarters. I do lose regularly to keep his interest.
he is a whiz kid and his younger brother has a weird version of autism and has communication issues but his mom started quizzing him on flags the other day and because he watched Ari memorize all the flags of the world he knows many of them too. We were surprised he knew Greece. France Italy and the USA flags in addition to others . Ari doesn’t understand why his brother doesn’t know Trinidad Tobago and unknowable African flags
I am a grandpa 3 times now with 2 more on schedule for October. The twins come from my sports trivia son who used to drive me nuts with trivia questions . The way I slowed him down was with math problems. Counting backwards from 100 by 3 or 7. 4000 divided by 16 … stuff like that. It’s fun getting in their brains
LikeLiked by 2 people
we used to play mandala with my kids and enjoyed it but i don’t remember how it works. I’ll see if I can find it and pull it out for ari. brother Denver would need to be watched to keep from eating them
LikeLiked by 2 people
Debbie is an organizer and one of my issues with her was that the games were put away so severely the kids could never have access
now the grandkids want to paint and color play with Play dough but she makes it a challange for them. I tape paper to the floor so if they paint or color outside the edges it’s on an acceptable surface but she cleans it up as soon as they walk away. I’d bitch but she’s as focused on her mission as the kids are on theirs. Thank goodness for spring. Outside is wonderful. And less clothing is a strong preference
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ari’s current favorite is uno
his dad helped him win at the last family event. My 94 year old mom loves winning games too but her eyesight is going fast
I’ll have to think up some vision optional games
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, we played a lot of Uno.
Would love to hear about your vision optional games when you’ve got ’em in mind.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Losing to the kids while running or wrestling was fun. I never let the Boy win at chess. Now I can never defeat him.
This “losing” experience sticks in my mind. Playing against the Hungarian chess masters at the Festival Of Nations, I was doing very well against one guy. But he took a break and a better player took his place. He came to my board, looked at the position and made a blunder but moved on to the next opponent. I immediately made my killer move. A minute later he came back to my game, took back his move and mine!! I was POd. Protested to no avail and rather than play on, tipped over my king and resigned. “Losing” to that loser…
LikeLiked by 2 people
I do not remember. I suspect I let them win some games of checkers or the like. We played lots of Uno which they could win. My kids are fanatic board game players. My son has contacts in that world who tell him about new games coming out, which he shares with his sister. They both have a collection of board games that are deep thinking and imaginative games. When my son was in high school they developed a board game club from kids in east Duluth, Two Harbors, and Silver Bay, who usually met at our house, which was fun. I do not like board games. I played at least a thousand games of Scrabble with Sandra. I doubt she won 50. I only played to please her. She did not care if she won. We played lots of Cribbage, which she won as often as I did. It was a nightly ritual after the kids went to bed: one of those two games and popcorn, played on the floor for the sake of my back.
Clyde
LikeLiked by 3 people
Husband and I played a lot of cribbage, too – he taught me early on, and it was a decade before I could beat him with any regularly. Soon after his stroke, we would play and I would try to lose sometimes to keep it more even. But eventually I got skunked a couple of times and decided it was time to play for real – we don’t play that often, but take the cribbage board out to some fast food joint like Burger King for a change of pace.
LikeLike
I don’t think I have ever deliberately thrown a game. I have a deep down compulsion, not so much to beat the other person, but to conquer the game, whatever it is. I have to do strive for the best I can do.
LikeLiked by 1 person