Board Gaming

-

 Went to a board gaming event at the Asian Civilization Museum - It was a really fun evening and I ended up meeting a group of board gamers here in Singapore. 

 I also played 4 games - 3 of which I had never played before -


  1. Chai Garam, a worker placement mechanic where you are running a tea stall to collect reviews;
  2. Century Golem where you build a gem collection engine - similar to Splendor but different mechanics
  3. & Secret Hitler which is a social deduction game.


It was only the next day that wifey pointed out something I didn't notice at all - I didn't play any games exclusively with my daughter.

Girl z is 8 and Boy Z is 10 - I tend to play games with him more often because he instinctively picks up and understands more complex games.

Except, she still needs my attention.

And I need to get better at recognizing it.

Boy Z is cautious, careful, diligent, loves to read. Girl Z is a happy skipping lark who likes shiny objects. Boy Z takes time to open up. Girl Z will chat happily with everyone under the sun. This isn't a gender difference—it's a personality difference. Nature wanted to maximize the chances of at least one of them surviving, so it made their personalities as far away from each other as possible.

So how do I parent this endless well of joy and laughter — a boundless current of thoughts so lively that even a troupe of chattering monkeys couldn’t keep up?

The answer is surprisingly simple. And yet it took me this long to see it. 

I grew up with this mental model in my head of what I want my kids to learn and know - multiple languages, a martial art,  a musical instrument, a sport etc. It didn't matter what those individual activities were as long as they tried it out. I was /still am horrible at dancing and figured if they learn, they will be 'cool'. I was decent at chess and so I hoped they would learn that as well. I figured the world is 70% water so they should at least know how to swim. Though I also know non swimmers are actually less likely to drown because they stay far from the water in the first place.  

My point is, everything that I expect from them are my expectations

Let me narrow it down to one specific example - Reading. I read 60-100 books a year. It's the most amazing thing in the world for me to be alone in a  room with a pile of books to read.

Little z hates reading. As hard as that is for me to wrap my head around, that's who she is. Not a version of her that needs fixing. Not a work in progress. Just her.

I've been pushing them to want what I want them to want. That doesn't work.

It's not very different from the trope of the Indian parent urging their kids to become engineers or doctors.

Also, she can really really dig her heels in when she feels she is being made to do something she doesn't want to do. Like a feral cat on steroids. This is definitely a gene from wifey.

The real lesson isn't about adapting to different personality types—it's simpler than that. It's about showing up for my kids as they actually are, not as I imagined them. Girl Z doesn't need me to convince her to love books or learning in the way I do. She needs me to notice when she's in the room. To pick a game with her. To see her.

That's what I'm going to do differently.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Article by the Asian Review

-
 https://asian-reviews.com/2025/03/11/fiction-mirrors-the-truths-emotions-and-complexities-of-the-world-we-inhabit-rohan-monteiro/   Fiction mirrors the truths, emotions, and complexities of the world we inhabit.” Rohan Monteiro By dhanukadickwella on 11 Mar 2025 • ( Leave a comment ) Q: Not everyone writes, nor can everyone write. Tell us what inspired you to pick up a pen and start writing, along with a brief introduction of yourself. A: It was 2014. I had just learned I was going to be a dad. I was at that point a research consultant in Singapore in a job and role that wasn’t going anywhere. I felt I needed to do something with my life that my kid (s) would look up to. Something that felt more meaningful instead of sitting in an office all day. That’s when I decided to write a book. My name is Rohan Monteiro, and my first non-fiction novel, ‘Keep Calm and Go Crazy’, was published in 2015 by HarperCollins. My most recent book was relea...
Read more

The pursuit of the perfect...desert?

-
  Back in the good old days, when I had more hair on my head than growing out of my ears, there was a girl I dated briefly. She was on a quest to find the perfect coffee. Every weekend, she would visit a different café across Dubai , choose a Cappuccino and pen down her observations in her journal. I had no such interest. Going out to a café became a thing in Mumbai roughly in 1996, when ‘Barista’ started popping up as a trendy chain of outlets across the city. Or maybe that was when I first began venturing out of my sheltered little pod because it was my first year of college. Until then, I hadn’t seen much of the city except a square kilometre around my house in Juhu which included my school, the doctor, the pharmacist, two churches and a graveyard. Basically, everything I might ever need was in that space and I had never ventured outside it. But now, I was in Bandra – the cooler, more hep cousin of all the other suburbs with shorter skirts, tastier food and a lot more entert...
Read more

Shadows Rising #3 -From the Cutting Floor - The Caste System

-
    This is the 3rd  in a series of posts written originally as part of 'Curse of the Yaksha' aka 'Shadows Rising' but that were dropped from the final version. This piece is about the caste system in India. The Caste system is a social hierarchy that has been prevalent in India since ancient times (2500 -3000 years), according to some sources . For context, particularly non-Hindu readers, there were four broad categories in the caste system:  o Brahmans - Scholars /Sages o Kshatriyas - Warriors o Vaishyas - Farmers, Traders, Merchants o Shudras - Manual Labour Although there are four main castes, thousands of sub-castes further divide India's people. Additionally, there is a separate caste who aren't considered part of the system at all – the Untouchables or Dalits. They are shunned by society and forbidden to live amongst those of high castes. They handle the jobs the rest of the castes refuse to do, such as cleaning latrines, manual scavenging, prostitution, ...
Read more