My ten-year old loves to play board games, but none of his friends want to play games with him because he’s constantly cheating. What can I do to encourage him to play by the rules?
A recent British study found that 40% of adults cheat at board games, so it’s possible your son isn’t the only one who occasionally “borrows” from the bank in Monopoly—or uses a little sleight-of-hand at dice-rolling time during a game of Sorry!
The best way to teach your child how to play by the rules is to be a good sport yourself, both when you’re playing board games with your child and when life itself deals you a less-than-perfect hand. You want your child to get the message that it’s better to keep your cool and focus on your comeback strategy than to fling the game pieces at your opponent. Just don’t expect your child to master these lessons overnight. It’s not easy to keep your cool when you just been taken to the cleaners by the guy who was lucky enough to scoop up both Boardwalk and Park Place!
And as for the problem of people not wanting to play with your child, that’s a lesson that will take care of itself—a natural consequence of the cheating. Once he starts to play by the rules, he won’t have any shortage of potential opponents.
