"THE GAME OF LIFE" FOR A FAMILY GAME NIGHT

Last week I bought "The Game of Life", a rather famous board game, simply because I discovered that it was on sale. At first, I was not really keen on trying to play this game since the game set I bought was in French (the French version of this game is named as "Destins" - Le jeu de la Vie). Obviously I do not have enough confidence in my French, not alone the fact that the French level of my hubbie and Mew is even lower than mine. But well, Mew was asking me all the time to take the game out for a try. I guessed she got familiar with board games at the daycare. And I also remembered reading a lot of articles about the great benefits of family game nights for the children. So I decided to give it a shot: organize a family game afternoon (instead of night, too late for Mew) after having read and understood the How-to-play instructions.


It turned out great! We did enjoy the game - an exciting journey through life - very much. Mew caught up with us parents rather quickly in following the game rules. In fact we did not really care for the statements in each cell on the game board. I was in charge of translating the game and acted as the banker too. The most interesting detail of this game is that a lucky player when jumping onto a certain cell might exchange his low salary for a higher salary of another player. Mew was very excited with this option and she indeed exchanged twice her salary with her Daddy, lol. And all of us aimed at ending up at the Millionaire's Mansion rather than the Retirement Home. However, I have to admit that the simple object of The Game of Life that is to get through life and retire the richest sends a distorted moral message to children about the meaning of life success!

Since Mew's French knowledge was still too limited to read the game, our focus was to help her strengthen her counting skills, learn patience through waiting for turns and indirectly teach her about the benefits of pursuing a university path rather than entering the workforce immediately without any higher education. In the first game play, Mew chose without a second for thinking the option of launching herself into the labour market so that she could earn money right away rather than spending more time at the university. Although we tried to explain to her that a university diploma in most of the cases would lead to a higher salary, she apparently did not really understand the advantages of a university career. Her decision was quite consistent with her current attitude to studies: she was lack of interest in studying and she was also very impatient. However, after the first game play, with the result that Mew was the loser with the least money in pocket whereas we both with our university diplomas earned a lot of money, Mew saw the problem more clearly and she was totally convinced that a university education was a must to help her become a rich person. Just a note here: we understand completely that there are many paths to a successful life and career and a university degree is merely one of these paths. However, we also believe that with a university diploma, a person will normally have more choice and more chance to be successful in his professional life and thus we want to encourage Mew to pursue her study to the highest attainable level.

To confirm that a university choice is usually a better decision, this afternoon we played the game again. Learning from her own experience, Mew chose a university path while her Daddy this time changed his decision and chose to go to work instead. The result of the game: Mew won and became a retired woman with the most money at the end of life whereas her Daddy had only about one third as much money as Mew (Note: her Daddy was really unlucky in this game despite the fact his salary was among the highest and was also the most stable: he lost a lot of money along the way for payment of taxes, fees, and damages. Life is full of surprises, hein?). But, the most important thing we got from this evening game: a fun family activity and an affirmation to the benefit of a university career for our little daughter.