Games People Play

Today’s kids may clamor for the latest high-tech amusement or beg for more television time. But if you really want to get them hooked on a form of entertainment, declare it family game night and pull out the classic board games.

That’s right. Monopoly, Parcheesi, Sorry, Life, Clue, Candyland, Scrabble, Chinese checkers, chess, Risk, Mousetrap—all the games that filled our playtime as children are still fun today. What’s more, they foster the kind of family togetherness many worry is lacking in today’s rushed society.

Playing games together always has been a tradition in Drs. Catherine and Howard Fuchs’ household. From the time their two boys were small, the foursome spent evenings engaged in favorites like Monopoly, cribbage, charades and, later, chess and bridge. As a psychiatrist who counsels adolescents, Catherine knows the value of such family interaction touches many levels.

“The value is time together, both to just enjoy each other and to hang together,” she says. “There is also the opportunity to communicate. The more time you spend together, the more opportunity there is to know what’s going on in their lives—and yours. It provides a time to share.”

Board games also teach children important skills. Starting with games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders in pre-school, kids learn how to sit and focus, strategize, take turns, and be patient.

As they mature and move up to games such as the perennial bestsellers Monopoly, Life, or Sorry, they learn more complex strategies, critical thinking, negotiation, and that choices have consequences. Math skills also get exercised. In the case of Scrabble, spelling and language skills are honed.

“As kids get older, board games—and chess especially—teach a child the more time he or she takes to think through a move, the better chance of winning. That impulsive reactive response doesn’t win,” Catherine says.

She adds that while video games are two-dimensional, board games are three dimensional like the real world. For proper development, playing with three-dimensional games is vital.

Board games also give parents great opportunities to model and instill values of good sportsmanship. Board games result in winners and losers, and children get to see how to handle that. Letting the little ones win all the time isn’t teaching a realistic life lesson, she adds. Showing them how to be gracious losers is far more valuable.

But what really counts as much as or more than the game itself or the skill involved is the time spent together as a family doing something fun. With schedules sending Mom, Dad, brother, and sister often running in different directions, the chance to have one another’s undivided attention for a period of time is priceless.

Playing board games together allows parents to relive a little of their childhoods and do something that’s just plain fun. As the Fuchses note, playing together always brings on laughter, and that’s something all families could use more of every day.

Beth Stein is a mother, wife, and columnist on parenting and women’s issues for a daily newspaper and is a regular contributor to American Profile.

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