The Games Toddlers Play

So it turns out that I’m a little more of a Type-A mom than I thought I was. I’m basing this on the first and so far only round of Candyland that my 3-year-old daughter and I played together last Sunday.

I set the stage for this learning experience – Lucy’s first organized, rule-following board game – pretty well by holding off on the game until after she woke up from her nap. We took the game out of its shrink wrap, I shuffled the deck of cards and pulled out the four gingerbread men game pieces and read over the rules because it has been maybe 30 years since I last played Candyland.

I pretty much should have skipped that whole rule-reviewing step because it turns out that even though the box says “ages 3 and up,” your average 3-and-a-half year old girl, or at least my 3-and-a-half-year-old girl, could care less about following the directions. We started out taking turns and abiding by the rules, turning over the cards with the little colored square (or squares) on them and moving our little cookie men ahead accordingly in an orderly fashion along the path to the candy castle.

Trouble broke out when Lucy arbitrarily decided that she didn’t want to be the red gingerbread guy anymore; she wanted to move my blue man like it was hers. I gently corrected her a few times, but she kept giving me these sidelong glances that told me that she knew she was doing it wrong and just didn’t care.

The game unraveled from there. Before I knew it, the hundred little cards were spread all over the game board and the four gingerbread men were lined up on top of them and facing Lucy, who was leading them in some kind of choreographed dance routine. I suddenly realized that I was getting in her way – she was having more fun without me. I took my cue and awkwardly got up from my little chair at her tiny table and moved from her corner of the kitchen to my own to dump the dishwasher and cook dinner.

I’ll admit that it drove me just a little bit crazy that Lucy wouldn’t follow the rules. Yes, she’s only 3, but the box said she was ready.  And isn’t it up to me, her mother, to teach her things like how to play the world’s simplest board game? I mean, if she doesn’t master Candyland, how will she ever manage with the more sophisticated Chutes and Ladders? I guess until Lucy is ready to play by Hasbro’s rules, I need to loosen up my own.