My New Favorite Board Game Tradition

My boys are now ten and thirteen. Some parents have a harder time connecting with their kids and their interests at these ages, but as a pretty geeky household, I think we have an easier time of it. Getting older just meant my kids unlocked certain geek hobbies a lot more than when they were younger. They can play more complex board games, watch certain content they were not ready for when they were little, and start playing Dungeons & Dragons. I also do martial arts with the kids now. There has been a little challenge with my teenager as more of the video games and side hobbies (like mini painting) are things that I share with our younger kid. We’re also sorting out that balance of the teenager having some hobbies and things just for him without everyone else being directly involved. We want to let him have his space, but  I don’t want him feeling like he gets less one-on-one time with us than his brother. 

A little over a month ago, I came to a solution: Board Game Day. When our pre-teen is at an after school club, the teenager and I have a chunk of time at home that’s just the two of us. We also have a slight advantage in that, 95% of the time, the teenager doesn’t have homework that needs to be finished at home as it was completed at school. This gives us a nice little window of time perfect to slide in a board game before the pre-teen needs to be picked up. I wasn’t 100% certain how it would go over when I suggested it at first, but the teenager jumped on the idea and instead of waiting a week to get started, he chose to pick a game we already knew so we could start it up that very day.

Now that we’ve had a few weeks to get this going, I have a better routine for playing. Before teenager gets home, I usually have the game set in advance and we can usually get through about 80% or more or it before pre-teen’s pick-up time with the occasional finishing the last little bit once when we get home again. Teenager knows he can wait to do his chores until after the game as long as he gets right to them. I will admit that we’ve have had to do a little negotiating a few times based on other circumstances that came up. We had a week where the household was sick enough that we all felt absolutely awful so we had to reschedule. In that case the deal is that we reschedule during the week. We also don’t skip days that the club isn’t being held on (like Spring Break). Instead, we let that give us more time to work with and will often find longer games to play during that time. If there’s something else going on like the day being extra busy or one when I had a rough headache a lot of the day, I might pick out a shorter game or a game we’re already familiar enough with so that the rule teaching section is a bit shorter.

I love this new tradition of ours.

1. It means we finally get around to the Board Game Shame Pile of things we haven’t quite gotten along to playing yet. If I have a review game, those get priority, but for games we acquired through things like Kickstarter or gifts, we often lose track of time to play in the shuffle of our lives. Having a designated time to play really helps.
2.  Teen has time to just hang out with me doing something he enjoys which is really nice for us. He’s very good at board games (I rarely win), and watching how he approaches the strategy of games is really fun. He’s come a long way from those early board games like Feed the Kitty.
3. I do enjoy playing games, I just haven’t been great about making certain that I had time to actually play them when it wasn’t for a review. I absolutely enjoy game reviews, but playing a game for a review when I need to stop and get pictures and such is a different experience from just sitting down and playing just because I feel like it.
4. There’s been some nice variety in our games. We do get a decent amount of games from things like Kickstarter or even gifts (wishlists are often filled with games I was eyeing but someone else got to review). We even put some old favorites in our playlist. Our games have included things like Ticket to Ride, Wrong Party, Happy Little Dinosaurs, Cryptid Café, and Isle of Cats. There was a day we finally broke out an Avatar: The Last Airbender-based game called Oh, My Cabbages! but, while we love the adventures of Team Avatar, the game balance was so off that it wasn’t a great experience. What was a great experience was the time with my teenager and after years of doing so many board game reviews, he has clear opinions on why he felt the mechanics were not balanced. There are some other great ATLA games out there though, this one just did not hit the mark and, based off of other people’s reviews, others felt the same way. Flamecraft looks to be next on our list and I am super excited about that because I’ve heard a lot of good things.
5. I’m honestly waiting for the day kiddo sees something at our FLGS that looks interesting and asks if I would be willing to use some of my trade credit for us to pick up a copy for our game days. I’m totally up for that. I was also extra excited when our copy of Command of Nature arrived because I actually felt like we are more likely to get to play it in a decent time frame.

So if you have a geeky teen that you want to spend a little extra time with, might I suggest setting up a little board game tradition with them. It’s definitely a thing I’ve come to enjoy.