So, I recently moved…from Baltimore to Oakland, California. Life has been a little upside down for the past weeks and my contact with kids has been scarce <sniff>. But lucky for me, I got to share in some borrowed family time on my journey westward. It was wonderful. I got to spend time with some lovely people and three lovely kids. I didn’t really realize that I was missing this, until I came upon it in the woods around Lake Tahoe.

At the end of our too-short stay, I got to play some games with a 5-year old. Go Fish and checkers were both new to him and he was eager to flex his game-y muscles with an unsuspecting and unknown adult. If you don’t know, adults are sometimes more fun for kids to play with because they tend to be more malleable other than kids. When a child wants to use their imagination and make up the rules to their own game, adults will be most likely not to interfere with their laid plans. Other kids will have ideas of their own. Boo. Don’t they know who is captaining this ship? Reasonably then, this young man was under the impression that he was in charge of whatever game we were playing.

Sadly though, I have some rules of my own when playing games with kids.

#1 Rules need to be agreed upon by both parties BEFORE THE GAME BEGINS

Raise your hand if you have ever gotten halfway through a game with a kid and they decide that now is the time to switch the rules, mostly in order to benefit their quest for glory. I just raised my hand and I’m writing this in a public place. I entered into a game of Go Fish without realizing that I should have made my position on rule changing clear. My bad. Next game we play though, I’ll remember.

Before we began checkers, I said that I would love to play as long as all of the rules were decided upon before the game began. Once the game started, the rules were essentially “closed.” We dithered a little bit, but basically ended up with the regular rules to checkers. Cool. I’m not good at this game, but I can get behind that. And so it began. Not long into the game, this “rule” was challenged. Some crazy jumps were taken and my black checkers were significantly diminished. Hmm. I restated my earlier point that the rules had been agreed upon and that they were closed. I got some imaginary reasoning in response and so I had to sit and wait while he decided what to do. Which leads me to rule number 2…

#2 If we’re not going to play by the rules that we agreed upon, then I can’t play with you

Sorry to “take my ball and go home,” but we had a meeting prior to checkers being played. Once I worked to uphold this rule, he was a little at a loss as to how to proceed. So I set the timer on my phone and said that if he could make a real move before it went off, then I could keep on playing. If not, then I would have to stop. Luckily, I didn’t have to walk away, but I was more than prepared to. I did have to get going and did I mention that I’m not that good at checkers…

It’s not poor sportsmanship to take this tack. Forgive me, but it’s poor sportsmanship to change the rules in the middle of the game. Once the boundaries were set and mutually abided by, we could both be good “sportsmen” and enjoy playing checkers with each other…which is exactly what happened. We worked together even while competing with each other. He felt a part of things while not being the mad dictator.

That young man taught me a valuable lesson that day. Though maybe I had already known it somewhere subconsciously, it’s nice to be reminded that it’s not really fair to change the rules in the middle of the game.