YOUR TURN!

Kate is reminded that life can be a cruel game

Playing Monopoly with my daughter over the holidays taught me a valuable lesson. No, not to buy apartments early, but to play as an equal.

Playing with kids in a way that allows them to win or lets them believe they’re better than they are only sets them back in the long-term. But it’s the age old quandary, isn’t it?

Say Dad is hitting a ball with the kids or playing backyard cricket. Do you let them “have their turn” or run them out on the first ball? Most of us are playing with our kids because we want to have fun with them. It’s a bonding time, a time for connecting, chatting and laughing. Is it fun if they spend the day sulking or in tears because they’re losing? Is it fun if you spend the whole time explaining and enforcing the rules?

Isn’t it easier (as I thought it was until now) to just go with the flow, and let them play and enjoy? So what if they skip jail early or land on your hotel and can’t pay the rent? Does it really matter as long as the game kicks on and you’re having fun?

Well, it turns out it does matter – when they go to play it for real with someone else. Like their big sister, who is really good and really ruthless at Monopoly. In this situation, I suddenly had big blue eyes looking pleadingly over to me, full of self-doubt and confusion.

“But Mum, can’t I hop out of jail by now?” she said. “Do I have to pay rent if I can’t afford it?”

In this moment, I realised something awful. By allowing her to play a watered-down version of the game, I had in fact done her a disservice. She was frustrated that she didn’t know the proper rules, frustrated her big sister was whipping her butt and annoyed with herself for not being as good as she thought she was.

This was all my fault. I should have been tougher and taught her life’s not fair. That Monopoly, in particular, is about the worst game you can play if you intend to keep up good spirits and good familial relations.

But it also made me wonder where else I had hoodwinked her. Had I applied this laissez- faire approach to her whole life? Had I lured her into the false reality that life was kind? That everyone she meets will want to treat her the way her mum does? That nothing is a problem if you just ask nicely?

I was acutely aware that I may well be guilty of trying to sugar-coat some pretty brutal realities – that life sucks, that life isn’t fair and that you do have to pay an extortionate amount of rent if you land on your sister’s hotel.

I realised I needed to do a better job of treating her like an equal, of not pandering to her big heart, immense kindness and tender softness, but of allowing all of that to flourish, while still making her aware that life (and Monopoly) is hard.