Last night I opted to spend some quality time with my child playing a card game.
It's not always as fun as you might think. I mean, playing with my child is always a blessing and a great joy, but, one can only play Old Maid, Go Fish, Memory, Uno and Crazy 8's (remarkably similar to Uno) so many times before one goes a little crazy.
Kids, on the other hand, can play these games over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, as long as they win most of the time. If they lose the game too often, they lose interest. So as parents, unless you are just a militant parent, you will often throw the game because, "hey, the kid is cute and they're having fun. I don't need to prove anything. Let 'em win!" And that kind of thinking will ALWAYS backfire and get you into trouble; sort of.
Essentially, as they get older, the kids will start to get cocky and be pretty much convinced that they cannot lose! This makes playing against them a lot less fun. It starts to become demoralizing to you, the adult, that this kid thinks they are so much better than you because you, the adult, keep drawing bad cards from the "fish pond." So, you snap! With a vengeance, you make it your goal to clobber that kid at cards! And so you do it for two rounds and the kids starts to cry. "Okay, they're humbled" you think to yourself, and so you throw the next round.
AND THE KID IS COCKY AGAIN!!! So, you opt to clobber them a few more times and you do but then you lose once or twice even though you are not throwing the games anymore. This goes back and forth until both of you are on such an emotional roller coaster of joy and sadness, for the child, and victory and guilt combined with a little bit of failure for you, the adult parent. It's a vicious cycle.
You get to the point where you just can't even look at each other anymore. You simply slide the cards into the coffee table drawer and you leave them alone for a month or two. You don't speak about what happened to each other ever again.
Once a few months have passed, then it's the time to teach them grown up card games! This is the time for them to learn, BLACKJACK!
My Grandfather taught me how to play Blackjack and Poker when I was about 7 and I thought it was the coolest thing EVER! We did not gamble all you ney sayers out there. Go ahead, say "ney"... good.... work it out of your system. He had chips and a whole card set. I think you are assigned these things when you reach 70. I'm not exactly certain.
Me, my siblings, my uncle, my Dad and my Grandfather would all play until late into the night, like maybe 9, and at the end, I would count my chips! IT WAS AWESOME!!! I had blue ones and yellow ones and red ones and I don't remember caring about whether or not I had more than anyone else. I just needed enough to make a tower or even a castle out of my chips. In fact, we didn't necessarily have to play cards. I liked the chips.
Quite recently, I was reminded by a friends children who have recently started playing Blackjack that this is a fun game to share with a kid. So, last night, I decided to teach it to mine!
"Honey, do you want to play cards after dinner?" I asked sheepishly remembering old conflicts.
"Are you going to win?" Her greatest concern.
"You're not playing against me, you're just trying to beat the dealer!" I am so comforting at times.
"Well who's the dealer? It's just us." She's too smart for her own good.
"Well, I'm the dealer, but that's not important"
"Then I'm playing you? Right?" I was losing her.
"Yes, but.. you know what, here are the cards we're going to use..." I needed to move on.
"There's no pictures on them. Where are the animals? Why is that lady holding a stick on that card? Why is he wearing a crown? Ooooooh a Joker!" This went on for some time.
So, we sat back and I explained all the cards and their values. The Ace was a toughie.
"Yes honey, it's an 11 and a 1." I tried to explain.
"so.... it's twelve?" poor kid.
Then we counted out pennies from our "charity box." We put loose change in a box with the plan to fill the box and donate it to a charity one day. I'm pretty sure Oliver North saved something like $15,000 in loose change. Sadly, I don't appear to have that much in my cars cup holder. So right now the charity box is also the "play money" box.
Then we played.
On a serious note, this is an excellent game for teaching a child how to count. They count out their ante and they learn to do very quick math counting up to 21, or higher if you "bust." I was amazed at how involved and excited she was to do math and just play.
Overall she broke even, but she finally understood that she was playing the dealer and the "luck of the draw." It was a lot of fun. She got a little cocky but it quickly went away when the dealer beat her.
If she gets too cocky, I'll teach her another fun counting game... 52 Pick Up.
For those of you who don't know this game, it's when one person throws all of the cards from a deck in the air and waits for them to all fall on the ground. The key to the game is that the "dealer" convinces the other player(s) that the person who gets the most cards first wins the game! After about three or so rounds, kids just get tired and go do their own thing.
I remember this well. I beat my Grandfather at 52 Pick Up all the time. In fact, he was so slow, I was almost always able to get all 52 before he even got up from watching tv!!! I RULE!!!!
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