When my sons were little, they sometimes wanted me to play board games with them. It helped them to have an adult helping them understand the rules and a third person to play with.
I liked playing board games with my kids. It was a way to spend time with my kids and have a little fun with them.
We were playing for fun, so we sometimes altered the rules a bit. One rule we followed was "Youngest goes first." which in practice meant we went in reverse chronological order.
My younger son went first, my other son went second and I went last. Any advantage there was to going first went to the person whose age was a tactical disadvantage. It helped even things up a bit and put us on a more even playing field.
When we played Civilizations and my youngest wanted to be Egypt, we let him even though Egypt isn't normally included in the three person version of the game. On one occasion, this went badly sideways because I ended being Africa for some reason.
This meant he and I were competing for limited resources and boxed in while my other son had all of Europe to himself, more land than he could even occupy. He was a giant jerk about it and left unoccupied lands to his rear to intentionally prevent us from expanding out of northern Africa.
This left me in a position where I could either let large numbers of people die every turn ("starve to death"), attack my other son who was also boxed in or somewhat pointlessly attack the offending party over and over with no real hope of gaining more land that way.
I might have managed to take some land from my younger son if I had attacked him, but it wrankled me. I went with the option to attack the offending party over and over and over.
My older son has social issues and as a child he fairly often engaged in pointlessly obnoxious behavior. This particular incident ended up being food for thought for him.
He knew I played board games for fun with my kids, not to win, so my very aggressive behavior was anomalous. He eventually stopped and asked me why I was making the tactical choices I was making.
This led to a good discussion about how if you gratuitously screw people over for no real reason, they may decide to just go after you and not stop because you aren't really giving them other options. In short, if you are a big enough jerk without a good reason, it can come back to bite you.
That was a relatively painless way for him to have the chance to think through where some of his bad habits and blind spots could lead him. It helped him decide to be less of a pointless jerk to people, having finally gotten the memo that there can be a cost somewhere down the line to such behavior.
I liked playing board games with my kids. It was a way to spend time with my kids and have a little fun with them.
We were playing for fun, so we sometimes altered the rules a bit. One rule we followed was "Youngest goes first." which in practice meant we went in reverse chronological order.
My younger son went first, my other son went second and I went last. Any advantage there was to going first went to the person whose age was a tactical disadvantage. It helped even things up a bit and put us on a more even playing field.
When we played Civilizations and my youngest wanted to be Egypt, we let him even though Egypt isn't normally included in the three person version of the game. On one occasion, this went badly sideways because I ended being Africa for some reason.
This meant he and I were competing for limited resources and boxed in while my other son had all of Europe to himself, more land than he could even occupy. He was a giant jerk about it and left unoccupied lands to his rear to intentionally prevent us from expanding out of northern Africa.
This left me in a position where I could either let large numbers of people die every turn ("starve to death"), attack my other son who was also boxed in or somewhat pointlessly attack the offending party over and over with no real hope of gaining more land that way.
I might have managed to take some land from my younger son if I had attacked him, but it wrankled me. I went with the option to attack the offending party over and over and over.
My older son has social issues and as a child he fairly often engaged in pointlessly obnoxious behavior. This particular incident ended up being food for thought for him.
He knew I played board games for fun with my kids, not to win, so my very aggressive behavior was anomalous. He eventually stopped and asked me why I was making the tactical choices I was making.
This led to a good discussion about how if you gratuitously screw people over for no real reason, they may decide to just go after you and not stop because you aren't really giving them other options. In short, if you are a big enough jerk without a good reason, it can come back to bite you.
That was a relatively painless way for him to have the chance to think through where some of his bad habits and blind spots could lead him. It helped him decide to be less of a pointless jerk to people, having finally gotten the memo that there can be a cost somewhere down the line to such behavior.