3 Reasons Kids Should Play Board Games

Tabletop gaming can be an expensive, time-and-space consuming hobby. But in an age saturated with cheap and easy entertainment, it’s more important than ever to introduce kids to board games while they’re young.

Here are three reasons why.

Board games teach competitive cooperation

The competition in tabletop gaming is embedded in a greater social context. There are tournaments for the obsessed gamer, but the vast majority of tabletop gaming is buffered on either side by friendly social interaction with those against whom you’re competing.

Even the act of learning a board game is cooperative. Two friends might scour the rulebook together, or someone hosting a game night explains a game to the group.

The environment of tabletop gaming naturally develops a preference for what researchers call personal development competitiveness.

In contrast, people who exhibit hypercompetitiveness, while not an issue in isolated competition, are unwelcome at a board game party.

Kids soon realize that interpersonal relationships and tabletop games are inextricably connected. If they have a tantrum over a lost game, they don’t get invited back to play.

Board games teach kids to see systems and set goals

As kids play more and more board games, they will naturally see a pattern emerge. Manipulation of the moving parts — the rules, strategies, pieces — is only done effectively in light of the big picture, the end goal. Any specific action taken within the context of a game generally needs to be part of a bigger goal.

This can help you view your life through the lens of systems.

At work, with family, and at leisure, we all have a variety of ways to spend our time and actions to take. But what does it matter if our actions are antithetical to our vision of how we want these aspects of life to be?

By working with limited rules and resources in a confined system, kids can learn to take careful action to achieve their goals.

Abstraction, strategy, and arithmetic

I spoke above about how board games teach us to view our actions in the context of a higher goal. But through those smaller actions, board games give us practice with important skills. They call on us to strategize, think ahead, imagine a variety of possible outcomes, and do basic arithmetic in our heads.

In role-playing games, we might flex our imaginations and impersonation skills, or practice public speaking as we read flavor text for the group.

All in all, not a bad way for kids to spend their leisure time.

What’s the biggest benefit you see in kids playing board games?