If you win, it doesn’t mean she loss

For the longest time, I have never been able to beat my daughter at the memory game. She has an uncanny ability to recall photographically where I had lifted and turned two mismatched cards from two, three or more turns ago to collect pair after pair of matching symbols and pictures. We’ve played it so many times, the cards themselves have seen better times. And time after time, I have come close, but have not been able to match her ability at recall. Then one day, I decided that I was going to win one game. She laughed it off and said, “You can try, daddy, but you will fail.” Ha ha ha. I sensed a challenge and so doubled down. I turned off the radio, turned on the lights and put on my best game face. I was determined to use my untapped brain cells to remember the locations of every card!

While I had approached the game with much concentration and focus, my daughter had approached it with her usual cockiness. She sang, danced, and poked at my face to disrupt my concentration. I was undeterred. Like the proverbial hare that rested as the tortoise labored, she was confident from the start by grabbing the first matching pair. I pressed on, slowly and diligently not resting on laurels. A few minutes later, I was matching her take in the number of pairs. She dismissed my winning streak as fluke and continued her naughtiness. More than half way through the cards, she discovered that not only was I playing well, I had amassed more matching pairs than she had. She stopped all silliness to focus on the game. I was on a relentless roll. I continued collecting matching pairs. She got nervous and it unsettled her focus. My winnings continued to bolster my confidence and I continued my sweep eventually taking more than 3/4 of the cards. The result was so obvious we didn’t need to count. She was surprised, followed by a bit of disbelief and then full-blown grumpiness. “This is a stupid game,” she scoffed.

It’s important for children to learn that life is a process of taking steps forward and sometimes stumbling back with the aggregate of coming out positive. And adversaries challenge us and compel us to do better! Without defeat, there is no victory and without struggle, there is no growth.

I have never allowed my daughter to win unquestioningly; every victory she received, she earned. When I taught her checkers, I would offer her alternatives when she made a sub-optimal move so she learns to better strategize. When we played card games, I would show her my hand to talk her though the possibilities. Even for games that have a degree of randomness with rolling dice, I would guide her until she begins to internalize the complexity of the game so she can make her own choices. But never once would I throw my own game to give her a hollow victory. So when I felt that she was feeling dejected at the first loss of this memory game, I quickly snapped back and said, “Just because I won, doesn’t mean you loss. In fact, this is only one game in so many we’ve played and I would hardly say that you are a loser.” She realized the perspective and mellowed out.

It’s important for children to learn that life is a process of taking steps forward and sometimes stumbling back with the aggregate of coming out positive. Kids in any type of competitive sports will know very quickly that games are won and loss and the tally is done at the end of the season. Season after season! Kids embarking on individual activities are also familiar with days of rough practice and training sprinkled with moments of divine inspiration and performance. It is normal to expect that life is like a giant Snakes and Ladders game; there will be ups and there will be downs. Without defeat, there is no victory and without struggle, there is no growth.

Another concept I try to teach my daughter is the non-zero sum game. We are used to seeing zero sum games play out like when her favorite basketball team wins the title. And while in simple terms, one team won and the other loss, the thrill of the game was evident because the ‘losing team’ played so well, that it necessitated a greater than proportional response of game play by the other team that actually won. In other words, adversaries challenge and compel us to do better! My determined and focused game play with the memory cards put my daughter on notice that complacency has no place as a strategy for winning. She also realized that her default winning streak was broken by the combination of her own smugness and the determination of a player who has never won against her before. Ultimately her loss emboldened her even more. The next time we played the memory game, she did so with such fortitude—if not just to recover a bit of lost satisfaction—her game play was quite formidable. Playing with that attitude will make her a winner in any game.