"The cheaters have to learn to play fair, and the sticklers have to figure out when to let a few things slide..."

You realize those are incompatible goals right?

What all seven-year old boys understand--even if their columnist mothers don't-- is that the key issue is fairness. Making a rule that the first person to roll snake eyes in a monopoly game gets $686 is stupid but fair. Making that rule AFTER you roll the first snake eyes is blatant cheating.

A true stickler would argue against making the rule at all on the (correct but pedantic) grounds that it unbalances the game.

Simply insisting on not being cheated, even loudly, doesn't make you a stickler. And refusing to be cheated even when all the other players acquiesce is evidence of excellent character.

It is sad to watch kids' faces as they are told that rules are not really rules at all. First comes the confusion, and then the distant look as they contemplate their new world. Last, and worst, is either the look of cunning that marks a newly minted cheater, or the look of despair identifying an idealist enduring punishment for a virtue.

Right on. Every game of anything I ever played as a child included as prologue, along with the various eenie-meenies or one-potatas of choosing teams, a recitation of the rules that would apply. It was universally understood that you can't change the rules in the middle of the game.

Any attempt to do so was met with the automatic rejoinder: "No way, you didn't call it." As in, "I call no outs if you fall down." Absent such a declaration, the rule cannot apply until the next game, unless all sides agree, to an "after this" modification. As in, "Okay, he's out this time, but after this, I call no outs if you fall down."

Someone who spends and entire dinner analyzing a kickball dispute is encouraging neurotic behavior in their child. There should be no problem with making the simple statement that it is unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game. That doesn't make your kid the rules weenie.

I am a parent, and I understand the temptation, but frankly, parents should be exactly like the recess monitors: make sure your kid doesn't break his head open, but other than that, let them figure it out for themselves. Yes, even at eight.

I too am a parent and I agree whole-heartedly with you. If you leave them alone, they'll work it out. If you want to interfere then be prepared to referee each and every dispute, argument, fight and spat that comes along. And there will be a bunch of them. Each day. But if you let them work it out by themselves then they will tend to get along.

jbtowers:

Someone who spends and entire dinner analyzing a kickball dispute is encouraging neurotic behavior in their child. There should be no problem with making the simple statement that it is unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game. That doesn't make your kid the rules weenie.

Glad I'm not the only one who thought it was neurotic and weird for the family to spend the whole dinner obsessing over the kickball dispute.

You know, I had the same thought about the fact that she seemed to imply that she was kibitzing while they argued about the monopoly rules. I don't think stickler vs. cheater is the issue here; I think the issue is how much mom should be micromanaging Eli's approach to game-playing.

I have to say, though, my real response to this article was, "Does Emily Bazelon wondering how much her son should fight with his friends about Monopoly really rise to the level of an article in a national publication?"

I understand the importance of lifestyle pieces, but at some point, I feel like we're going to go down a bit of a "let me tell you why I decided my son should take piano lessons" rabbit hole that's like...sometimes, the mundane is genuinely the mundane -- not the elegantly mundane, but the plain old mundane, in the sense that "kids fight over the rules when they play games" isn't necessarily much of a topic unless you really, REALLY have something to add. I don't really blame the writer here, because parents (understandably) have no perspective about how interesting stories about their children are to a national audience. But I, for one, could stand to see a little more of an editing hand as far as how much of this stuff there is.

You have to go by the individual child. Some kids will work it out by themselves, others need some help to figure it out. The majority may well be able to come up with successful strategies. But I never did; I didn't figure out anywhere near enough of the 'social intelligence' strategies I needed to get along with people myself; I had to wait till I was an adult and people were willing to actually tell me the things they had figured out themselves at eight or nine... It would've been very nice if some adults had actually told me these things. But then again, there's a whole bunch of adults talking about this one here in this chat and there's absolutely no sense of agreement. Though I think the overall feeling is that the meta-rule of make all rules apply after they're decided, not before, seems like a good one to most, there is still the sense that one should not stand up alone for what is right to a group, if it's not really important. That's something I didn't learn for years... and still don't have down intuitively, though I try my best.

I think the rule goes: Pursue fairness, but only enforce it if there are important real world consequences. State you are on the side of fairness in games for fun, but if everyone disagrees, let it go. This does mean that if you are disliked, the rest of the group can and will make sure you lose every game, but you are supposed to put up with it.

That's very hard on a competitive child with relatively poor social skills, and I think it needs a lot of elaboration as to why it is that way so they understand; it will not be adopted if it is said as an arbitrary rule; and it will certainly not be adopted as an attempt to deal with the situation by a child left alone to work it out for himself.

Magnificent Bastard:

What all seven-year old boys understand--even if their columnist mothers don't-- is that the key issue is fairness.

Exactly. The author seems to have only two stances - cheater or anal-retentive stick-in-the-mud. No. Kids know from fair, for heaven's sake, and changing the rules on the fly in your favor is never fair. Her kid seems to have a better grasp on fairness than she does.

Playing monopoly with friends and kickball at recess are two very different situations. Monopoly has a set of written rules that people can refer to, kickball rules are much more negotiable. Usually, even the dimensions of the field are arbitrarily set by the players themselves: first base is the patch of brown grass, second base is Jamie's sweatshirt, etc.

I've worked as a school staffmember during many a recess, and it's true we only intervene to keep students from hurting themselves or others, or to occasionally settle an irreconcilable dispute. We do this so the children can learn valuable social skills on the playground for themselves. And for the most part, they do a very good job of playing fairly. Recesses are short and kids learn that games progress more quickly and are more fun when there are agreed upon rules and everyone follows them. Peer pressure usually keeps kids from cheating. Sometimes rules are applied differently to different people, to accomodate for different ages or children with disabilities. I think this is all fine as long as everyone is in agreement.

Sometimes, however, things can skew the situation. Older kids or the popular crowd might use their extra influence to bend the rules to their unfair advantage. Again, this is a learning experience for children, they have to decide whether to go with what the in crowd wants, stand up for themselves or go play something else.

I think instead of the issue being about whether you're a cheater or a stickler, it deals with social and power dynamics. If it were my son, I'd tell him to stick up for what he believes is right and fair, but not to impose his beliefs on other people who are in disagreement. Sometimes unforseen situations arise in a game requiring an improvised rule, or there are genuine disagreements with what people see as fair. In the situation in the article, it seems that the fall down rule is an attempt by the other team to manipulate the game to their favor. It shouldn't be very hard for Eli to convince his peers that it's a stupid rule. If Eli's team and his opponents can't reach a workable compromise, maybe there's another ball and a space where he and his friends can have their own kickball game, leaving the floppers to theirs. If everyone else likes the fall down rule and agrees to play with it from that moment forward, Eli can either go along with the rest of the group or head on over to the tetherball pole. Either way, it should be his own decision