As a mum 2/4

As part of a 4 part run of how being a mother influences how i look at board games.


Part 2: What can be learned.

TLDR SYNOPSIS: There's lots to learn from playing games, physical, mental, social, but one ought to be aware of what is being taught by the games also.

Coincidentally:  This just appeared up through the Dice tower facebook page.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UCC2018WCo&feature=youtu.be

Children learn so many things so quickly, some of it we feed to them deliberately and some they just pick up somehow.  We're all well aware of the rating son movies and TV shows which are all about the potential for children to learn different things from what they see.  This is't about ratings.  This is about recognizing that everything has an education purpose and sometimes you may have to dig to find it but it can be surprising the things we don't think of.
For instance in any game kids can be learning about winning or losing graciously, that the game is the fun part winning isn't everything, about taking turns, waiting, and acceptable social interactions.
There are games that work on hand eye co-ordination, fine motor skills, balance, gross motor skills.
And the more expected, strategic thinking, deductive thinking, number recognition  colour recognition, sequencing, same/different, letter recognition, reading skills resource management, time management, team work.
Sitting down to play a fun game of scrabble has obvious education use ofr kids, what of the game of life, aside form being deathly boring for adults how about the fact that my oldest got to the end of the game with two mothers and a baby and she KNEW that that was ok, even though mummy and daddy's families both consisted of a mum and a dad.
Games can also be a good indication of your childs understandings of the world, where their strengths are and their weaknesses.  For instance, my oldest ha a big heart and understands love is love.  however at this point (she IS only 4) her competitive streak is fairly large so we play and gently remind her that if she's having fun that's the important thing.
The family time games provides is beyond valuable, and the insight to the members of your family and yourself you may gain from playing games is priceless.
They're learning, you're learning, and you're all sharing.

However, every awesome thing has a drawback, and the lessons one takes form a game, or tv show as mentioned about needs to be carefully monitored.
For example, take Monopoly.  A good portion of households will have this game in their cupboards.
Now aside form it helping people in the thinking that board games are actually quite monotonous (face it the roll and move mechanic isn't terribly interesting), consider theories and articles such as this
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2986/was-monopoly-originally-meant-to-teach-people-about-the-evils-of-capitalism%20%20
A noble lesson, but will kids get it, or will they just decide it's fun to get as much money as possible.  Parents absolutely can guide them through this, talk about it and so on, but i know many a parent who as they got older realized just how pointless and mind numbing the game really is and so I would hazard a generalization here in stating that many a kid will play it on their own or with their friends after the initial being shown how to play.
Games are wonderful for teaching all sorts of things, but those lessons, as with anything that ha inputs into our own minds or the mind of our kids need to be carefully monitored.