The Exhausted Dad: The emotional highs and lows of family game night
As a longtime board game aficionado, I suffered through many, many rounds of Candyland and Chutes & Ladders to reach an exciting new phase of parenting my four children.
Three of my four kids can now independently play tolerable board and card games. That means we can play regular Monopoly instead of Monopoly Jr. We can play Yahtzee or Phase 10 or Skip-Bo or Dominoes or chess* rather than checkers or some random “Frozen”-themed matching game. Even better: Nobody dares mentioning the game of Sorry! That game is an abomination.
(*My kids play chess. Even my 6-year-old can beat me in chess. I don’t know what to do with those horse or castle pieces. As a result, I don’t play chess.)
My wife and I used to love playing tabletop games with other adult friends. Then we had children. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but all our childless friends stopped wanting to come over to our house.
Oh well, because my 8, 10 and 12-year-old can now play (most of) the games we used to play. They even made kid-friendly versions of Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity! Fair warning: The kid version of Cards Against Humanity is arguably grosser than the adult version. Lots of poop and fart references.
My 6-year-old, meanwhile, prefers to play faster games like Uno, otherwise he’s more than happy to “peace out” for some tablet time. All throughout holiday break, he kept encouraging us to play a “long game” (and to give him more screen time).
Last holiday season, my wife and I realized the three older kids enjoyed playing a full sequence of Mexican Train Dominoes (a variation of regular dominoes that usually consists of 15 rounds of play). It can take hours! Our 6-year-old LOVES it when it takes hours.
Because it eats up so much space on the dinner table (and we tend to spread the game out over a couple evenings), we hadn’t played it since we made it through a full sequence last Christmas.
Or, alternatively, we haven’t played it for a year because it’s an insufferable game when things don’t go your way.
This year, I sat next to my 12-year-old daughter, and her turn preceded mine for the duration of the game. This was absolutely infuriating. Why didn’t we switch the seating or take turns counterclockwise halfway through the game? Don’t ask me. First graders can beat me at chess.
Three things about my daughter’s Domino performance this year:
1. I’ve never seen such good luck in all my life playing the game. She just kept pulling the winning tiles.
2. She blocked or ruined my own strategy at least 50 times over the course of the game.
3. She was real obnoxious about it.
To be clear: She didn’t gloat or display poor sportsmanship. Her behavior included humming, singing loudly and repeat use of the word “Breh.” As in, “I can’t play anywhere, Breh!” or “All my dominos line up perfectly, breh.” Ugh. I wish I didn’t introduce her to the term (courtesy of Tyrese and Paul Walker in “2 Fast 2 Furious”).
Essentially, she kept acting like the weird, loud, neurodivergent kiddo I love with all my heart. But when I’m losing, I want silence and empathy for my poor fortunes!
I’ve written some about how my family is comprised of wonderfully neurodivergent people. It’s never boring around our house, and sometimes, yes, it can be challenging for all six of us to be our “true selves” without overstimulating the others. While probably common for large families, the topic rarely appears in your typical parenting books or resources.
Children can certainly learn lessons from the frustrations of playing a board game alongside big personalities. In this instance, however, I learned much more about my own neuroses. I’m just as loud (and probably obnoxious) as the kids when playing the game. After all, I was the one who kept singing altered lyrics to the Juvenile hit, “Back That Thang Up” every time I played my turn.**
How can I be so boisterous and goofy so much of the time while simultaneously be extremely sensitive to someone else’s version of the same behavior? My children obviously share my genes, and so it’s probably up to me to help them develop tools to manage such contradictory personality traits.
It would have been easier if I had won even ONE STUPID ROUND OF THAT STUPID DOMINO GAME.
**For those of you wondering, the altered lyrics are:
“Call me Big Train,
Won’t you back that Train up,
You a big, fine trolley
Won’t you back that Train up.”
Every. Single. Turn.
• • •
Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 6-12. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
The Exhausted Dad