Games

It's just amazing to me how fast children's minds develop.

Jack took an interest in chess in early October. He is now crazy for almost any game that involves thinking hard or pushing plastic pieces all over a board. He loves chess best of all but he likes Checkers, The Great Composers (in which one chases all over Europe following the world's greatest musical minds on tour and learning little details about their lives) and Sorry. He still plays Mancala eagerly, and is absolutely crazy for battleship.

The thing is, he was very vague on the idea of "rules" as recently as August. He played by rote and imitated moves he learned from Dad that he thought would help him win, and he seemed to enjoy it, but there wasn't a lot of thinking going on.

These days, he is working hard to understand his games on a whole new level, and Rod says that he actually has to work at chess to keep from getting stomped.

He still thinks like a five-year old, though. I played Sorry with him at the library a couple of weeks ago and he came *that* close to stomping me minutes into the game -- I opened my mouth to say something but he rolled the dice and quickly moved the piece past its starting point, effectively starting over with that piece. I decided to see how long it would take him to notice.

It did, after all, extend the game and I figured that was fun, too.

Well, he was only one move behind me when I slid my last piece into "home" and only then did it occur to him what had happened. He decided then and there that he's not very good at Sorry, and we have talked about it many times since. I keep explaining to him that we all make mistakes -- especially when we're doing something that we think of as "easy", but that actually requires that we pay attention. We've talked about the times outside of games when that happens, and I think he gets it. Maybe.

We don't have a game of Sorry here (and we won't if Rod has any voice in the matter) so I don't know whether I have gotten through to him. We'll see on our next trip to the library.

Another interesting point is that while I am NOT a gamer and I don't actually enjoy them much, thanks to Rod I am able to play the occasional game with Jack.

I can enjoy the soothing rhythms of a game as long as the competition doesn't get too fierce and Rod has been working with me to help Jack to understand that different people play games differently and that while he and Dad enjoy a cutthroat competition, I don't. Jack is now able to play without (too much) crowing about winning and aggressive competition when he plays with me and turn right around and go for blood when his Dad sits down. That's a good skill for a guy who loves games like Jack does. He'll find it easier to find people to game with if he can adapt his play to the other players in the game! (I'm sure I am not the only one in the world who won't play at all if the other player figures it's a waste of time if there is no blood on the floor at the end of the match.)

The signs of new maturity are showing up in his reasoning, too, in ways that have Rod and I shaking our heads in wonder. There was so much we missed the first time because we were so busy with the hurly burly of growing up ourselves. Wow...