Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for May 21, 2015

Well said.

Pragmatism at work.

Agreed Baldo.

gracie should know the power of her brain by now

My parents never went easy on me to let me win. If and when I won a game, I knew I’d earned the victory.

Simply great

I don’t let my kids win, but I do change the rules to level the playing field. As with a “handicap” in golf, I can make giving an advantage to a weaker player part of the stated rules. For instance, I play a sight-word game with my youngest daughter. Since I know every word on the cards and she does not, the rule is that I have to pronounce everything phonetically. Voile, we now have an even playing field, and I have a challenge to match hers.

When one of my nephews was about six he had a bad reaction to innoculations he had to have for school and spent several days recovering in bed. During that time one of the neighbor boys taught him how to play checkers and came over every day to play him, one day he came out of my nephews bedroom going, “Yes, yes, yes, I finally won.” It turns out that once my nephew learned how to play he kept beating the neighbor boy in spite of the fact that the neighbor was about eight or nine years older than him.