"Ha!" Kristin said, smiling at me triumphantly. "I told you I'd win!" She was thoroughly delighted to have beaten me at a game of Candy Land. Like most kids her age (4), Kristin considered every round she played a test of her luck. When she drew the last purple card and reached the finish line, she took it as a sign that the god of good fortune had favored her. I had enjoyed the game, too: Spending time with my friend's daughter reminded me of the fun I had playing games with my children when they were very young.
What your child most wants — and needs — is to be with you with no goal in mind beyond the joy of spending time together. He wants you to take pleasure in him, play with him, and listen to him. Nothing bolsters his self-esteem more! So why not pull out an old board game tonight? Playing games is an easy and excellent way to spend unhurried, enjoyable time together. As an added bonus, board games are also rich in learning opportunities. They satisfy your child's competitive urges and the desire to master new skills and concepts, such as:
- number and shape recognition, grouping, and counting
- letter recognition and reading
- visual perception and color recognition
- eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity
Games don't need to be overtly academic to be educational, however. Just by virtue of playing them, board games can teach important social skills, such as communicating verbally, sharing, waiting, taking turns, and enjoying interaction with others. Board games can foster the ability to focus, and lengthen your child's attention span by encouraging the completion of an exciting, enjoyable game. Even simple board games like Chutes and Ladders offer meta-messages and life skills: Your luck can change in an instant — for the better or for the worse. The message inherent in board games is: Never give up. Just when you feel despondent, you might hit the jackpot and ascend up high, if you stay in the game for just a few more moves.
Board games have distinct boundaries. Living in a complex society, children need clear limits to feel safe. By circumscribing the playing field — much as tennis courts and football fields will do later — board games can help your child weave her wild and erratic side into a more organized, mature, and socially acceptable personality. After all, staying within the boundaries (not intruding on others' space, for example) is crucial to leading a successful social and academic life.
A Word About Winning
Children take game playing seriously, so it's important that we help guide them through the contest. When a playing piece falls to a lower level, our kids really feel sad; when it rises up high, they are remarkably proud and happy, even if we adults know that it happened only by chance. Therefore, you need to help balance your child's pleasure in playing the game with his very limited ability to manage frustration and deal with the idea of losing.
For 3, 4, and even 5 year olds, winning is critical to a feeling of mastery. So generally, I think it's okay to "help" them win. By about 6, kids should begin to internalize the rules of fair play, tenuous as they may seem to a child who is losing a game. So I am also fine with a 6 year old "amending" the rules to win if he feels she has to. I encourage you to acknowledge your child's need for special rules. At the start of the game, you might want to ask, "Are we playing by regular or cheating rules today?"
Choosing the Right Game at Every Age
While in the long run we need to teach values, ethics, academic skills, and the importance of playing by the rules, in the early years the primary goals are helping your child become more self-confident and ambitious and to enjoy playing with others. If you're playing with more than one child, divide the family into teams, giving each player a job he can do well: A younger child may be responsible for rolling the dice (which he considers important, since that is where the luck comes from), and an older child the job of sorting the Monopoly money.
Children can begin enjoying board games as early as 3 years old, but almost any game can be simplified and adapted for play with younger children or for your child's individual skill level. Generally, 3s and 4s can play games in which they match shapes, colors, or characters. But they can also play simple games that introduce early math and literacy concepts. Three year olds particularly enjoy the challenge of an age-appropriate puzzle — eight pieces is about right for them. Puzzles teach visual and perceptual skills, spatial and shape relations, and the notion of parts making up the whole as they enhance manual dexterity and eye-hand coordination.
As children approach 5, they have more sophisticated thinking skills and can begin to incorporate and exercise their number, letter, and word knowledge in literacy-based games. By 6, children may prefer more cognitively challenging games like checkers, which require and help develop planning, strategy, persistence, and critical thinking skills. Here are some of our favorite game picks for 3 and 4 year olds.
Candy Land (Milton Bradley): Nothing delights a young child more than the idea of living in a world of treats. In this game, color-coded cards — perfect for nonreaders — lead players along a candy-paved path toward victory. But a steady ascent is not guaranteed. Sometimes, after a long race to the finish, a player who is just one square from the end selects a card that sends her back to the beginning. How sad and maddening! But the reverse can happen, too.
Learning highlights: Builds color recognition and counting skills. Also promotes thinking, turn-taking, and patience.
Chutes and Ladders (Milton Bradley): A great introduction to numbers, the game's goal is to reach the perfect number: 100. Using the spinner as the guide, players move one to six spaces. Players count the number of spaces to move, and they must also change directions (right or left) at each new level. If a player lands on a chute he descends quickly, but if he lands on a ladder he ascends just as rapidly.
Learning highlights: Builds number recognition and counting skills. Introduces the concept of left and right. Promotes turn-taking and patience.
I Spy Preschool (Briarpatch): Based on the popular I Spy books, this card-matching game gives a younger child's memory and thinking skills a workout when she names and matches colors, images, and shapes from the 60 picture cards of mice, bees, and other familiar elements. The game invites even young children to think harder about the nature of different objects: a clown on one card might match a somewhat different clown on another. The game can grow with your child: Older children can use it to develop language and reading skills, as the game challenges them to turn up four memory cards and identify the one that answers a written riddle.
Learning Highlights: Strengthens observation and memory skills, and builds object, shape, and color recognition.
ABC Game (Ravensburger): An enjoyable introduction to the alphabet, this game also encourages eye-hand coordination and shape matching in a mini jigsaw format. The game has two sets of puzzle pieces, one with pictures of familiar objects (the sun, an apple) and another with capital letters on one side and lowercase letters on the other. It's great for letter and word recognition because the picture of a duck will fit only with the "D" letter card.
Learning highlights: Builds skill in associating pictures, words, and sounds with the letters words begin with.
Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D., is a child psychiatrist and coauthor of The Over-Scheduled Child and four other books. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia.
