Child's play

Reducing a child to tears by defeating her in a game of skill and strategy is not something I generally brag about. Sure, winning is great fun. But watching a four-year-old's big blue eyes well with tears because daddy manipulated her into checkmate in a game of chess is sad. Or maybe pathetic. Either way, each time this happened at our house, I would comfort my daughter and tell her that some day, maybe, with enough practice and experience, she might beat me. And when that day arrived, I explained, she would know that her victory was well deserved, that she had not been allowed to win, that she was the superiour player. And each time I delivered this life lesson, I would allow myself a brief, tiny, self-satisfied smirk. Not only had I just kicked a kid's ass in chess, one of the highest level thinking games ever invented, but, more importantly, I was a world-class father for turning a minor occasion of drama into a teachable moment. Well played, Dad, well played.

Then.

Except that it wasn't well played at all. In fact, I had committed a classic and obvious parenting blunder. Because a year later, when my now five-year-old daughter manipulated me into checkmate, I had nowhere to hide, either on the board or off. I had left myself without an  exit. I could not explain away defeat by claiming I allowed her to win. She defeated me because she was better than me. And she knew it.  It's sad for a little girl to have to watch the eyes of a man in his forties well with tears because he lost a game. Pathetic, really.  But my daughter was extremely gracious. She extended her hand and congratulated me on a game well played, just as she had been taught by her chess instructor, Mr. Vellotti. She possibly considered it a teachable moment: showing her dad how to win with dignity and respect. Then she skipped to her room for a private victory dance while I sulked and tried to process what had just happened.

Now.

She’s eleven now and too busy with school and other activities to maintain the practice schedule necessary to remain a competitive youth chess player. She is a nerd, but not full-nerd. Plus nobody at home would play her anymore. Unfortunately for her dad, though, she isn’t through beating him at other games of skill and strategy. For instance, she has this annoying thing she does when we play H-O-R-S-E out in the driveway. There’s a spot just to the left of the basket where she can kiss a shot off the backboard and through the hoop with an accuracy rate of about ninety-nine percent. It's not that difficult of a shot, except that she has discovered that my accuracy from that spot is closer to eighty percent. So she shoots from her spot until I hit H-O-R-S-E. Then she taunts and swaggers (so at least on some level I can make a difference in my children's lives) until she provokes me into another game. Which she wins. 

But that's only the start of my game/kid issues. The eleven-year-old has a sister. Her sister is four. The little one doesn’t have the patience to master chess in the way the big one did at that age. But the little one is lethal in her own way. Cunning, competitive, ferocious. Her current favorite method to humiliate her father is to play the memory card game. Forty-eight cards featuring twenty-four matching sets of animal images arranged face-down, randomly, on the living room floor. We take turns exposing two cards, keeping them if they match, replacing them face down if they don't. She can’t remember to wash her hands after using the toilet or where she left her shoes, but she can remember that the second two-humped camel card is in the fourth row of the third column because she had turned it over six turns earlier. When she wins, which is often, there are none of the niceties that the big one once displayed (again, Dad has prevailed). The little one already struts and talks trash until she provokes me into another game. Which she wins.

Dad's "war" arsenal.

There's also this: the little one is a card cheat. I taught her to play “war” – a game of random chance where you shuffle and deal each player twenty six cards from a standard deck. If there's anyone on the planet who hasn't played this game, both players flip a card and the player with the higher card takes all until one player has all the cards. It’s a great game for teaching numbers and learning concepts like greater than and less than. The little one quickly learned that a seven beats a six, that face cards are good and aces even better, and so on. So even though the game is mind-numbingly boring, I play. But the other evening after shuffling the deck in preparation for the next game, I had to step away for a moment (to fix a cocktail so that I could endure another round of "war"). When I returned, the little one proudly told me she had dealt the cards in my absence. I appreciated her initiative, admired her fearlessness in taking on a new task. But my Daddy Radar™ sensed a distubrance in the force. So I took a look at the cards in my pile and found nothing but twos through nines (she did toss in a ten, maybe to throw me off her track). When I flipped her pile - jacks, queens, kings, and aces. All of them. Cute she is. Subtle she is not. 

As a parent, my job is to prepare my children to be contributing, functioning members of society. I embrace that job. I want my girls prepared to stand up for themselves and to confront bullies. To ace calculus and to hustle on the basketball court. To be generous, passionate, compassionate, intellectually curious, humble. I want them to work hard and to play hard, to use their powers for good and not for evil. To appreciate Johnny Cash and Willa Cather and Felix Hernandez. And even though I may not like it, I want my girls to continue to beat their father in games that depend on skill and strategy. And importantly: if you're going to cheat at cards, make damn sure you don't get caught.