Kids & Cheating

I don't often write about my work but tonight I will do so.  But it's not what you're thinking.  I love when kids cheat at boardgames.  They do it in the funniest ways.  Although their cheating is painfully obvious to adults, they think they are being so clever, and that cracks me up everytime.

CandyLand:  Remember this bright and colorful game? A board covered in different types of candy! There's a tree made out of Gingerbread Plum, a house of Peanut Brittle, a lollipop forest, an ICE CREAM SEA, and if that's not enough, you win the game when you arrive at the Candy Castle.  My stomach growls just looking at the pictures.  By the way, the modern board is WAY more colorful, fun, and ethically-sensitive than the board I grew up with.  But I digress.  The other day a 5 year-old wanted to play this game with me.  It's a simple concept.  No dice.  No counting.  You pick a card, and go to the space that matches the color on the card.  You can land on blue, red, green, etc. Or, if you're really skilled, I mean lucky, you get cards with Double Blue or Double Red, meaning you can advance faster.  So, this little boy started switching turns.  When it was a card he did not want, he'd announce, "Oh! It was your turn remember?" If I said, "ahh, no, that's your card," he'd reply, "nooooo I just went, it's your turn."  Okay, whatever, it's CandyLand.  I especially love when he lands on the "licorice sticks" which normally means you lose a turn. (That's what it means when I land on the licorice.)  When he lands on the licorice, he announces, "this means I get to go again."  "Really?" I reply, "because it says right here, lose a turn."  He continues, "no it doesn't. Licorice is candy, so it means I get to bounce, I can jump on it, see, and bounce bounce bounce all the way to the other licorice sticks!"  Sure kid, it's only CandyLand. 

Chutes & Ladders:  This one is equally as fun when a child decides to cheat.  Basic concept: you land on a ladder, you get to climb it and advance quickly.  You land on a chute (in the South we call them slides), and you slide all the way back to a lower place on the board.  Ladders = Good.  Chutes = Bad.  It's not rocket science.  I'll be darned if a 6 year old girl didn't decide she could climb from the middle of ladders. "It's okay if I just jump on the ladder from the middle of it."  Actually no, the rules say you have to land at the exact end of a ladder in order to climb it but I don't remind her of this.  Then she declared that she could climb up the chutes "because in real life I climb them at the playgound."  After rolling a 4, she landed on another chute.  However, she quickly said,"wait it was a 5."  So I chime in with a smile, "it looks like a 4 to me."  "No ma'am see I was over here on this spot (no she wasn't) and when I count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I don't land on the chute (yes she does)."  Sigh.  Okay fine.  Let's discuss multiplication, and I'll kick your little...

Go Fish: How does one cheat at Go Fish, you ask?  Here's how.  Hold onto your cards when you don't want to give them away.  This is also called lying.  My advice to the 8 year old who does this every week is this: If I ask for a 3, and you say "go fish", don't immediately ask me for a 3 on your very next turn.  Side note: saying "but I just got it!" when you haven't had a turn yet, doesn't work either.

Jenga: ahhhh a game loved by kids and adults alike.  You stack the blocks, then take turns sliding them out one by one, without knocking over the whole tower.  Funniest competition ever: a 5 year old girl who just picked off the blocks from the very top.  Meanwhile I'm sliding shaky blocks from every nook and cranny.  Best part was when she said, "I'm so much better at this than you!  You keep knocking them down and I haven't knocked one down yet!"  BECAUSE YOU'RE CHEATING!

In case you're thinking I'm a push-over, you should know, I don't always let the kids cheat.  When they do it consistently, I lay down some limits. "That is not following the rules.  It's not fair when the rules change for you but not for everyone else.  I'm going to choose not to play with you when you choose to cheat."  Ooh, this usually signals the end of the game. ;-)

I think my frustration comes from a generational gap between me and these younger kids.  They are addicted to video games, as we all know.  Remember when you had to sit quietly in the doctor's office with nothing to do but annoy your older brother, and then get pinched by your mother?  Nowadays, our tech-savvy kids have iPhones, iPads, portable DVD players, and iPods to keep themselves occupied.  Kids don't have to learn to wait anymore.  They just watch a movie for 15 minutes, play 50 rounds of NinjaFruit, or download the newest Taylor Swift song on their iPod.  If you don't know how to wait, then cheating is just a hop, skip, and jump away.  They don't know how to lose because they don't.  They all get "participation" trophies in sports.  And when they return glossy-eyed to their video games, they can hit "reset" or enter "cheat codes" so they never die, and never lose.  These are the same kids who are fascinated by playing tennis on the Wii.  Hey, guess what junior? You can go outside, walk to the park, and actually play tennis for real! Really!

I assume the generations before me complained about my generation being spoiled.  We did have Atari and Highlights magazine for God's sakes.  I vividly remember my mom telling me in the dentist's office, "stop moving around! Just sit here and find the missing objects in the Highlights magazine." 
"But someone already circled them," I'd whine. 
"I don't care," she'd say. "Find them again!"

So I'm sure my frustration with younger generations is not new.  I don't like to lose though.  But in the name of rapport-building, I keep losing, time and time again.  So I have no other choice but to laugh at their creativity.  Afterall, it's the only way I ever lose at something as mindless as CandyLand.