For a long time, I secretly felt guilty for not playing more board games with my children. Like reading aloud and putting together puzzles, I felt board games were a staple of childhood development. And yet, I had just as many board games available to my children as puzzles, probably more. So why didn’t my children play board games more often? I had a recent ah-ha moment that may answer that question and alleviate my guilt.
I was at a park day sitting in the grass as I listened in on a nearby conversation. One of the mothers was wondering to the leader of the organized activity if we should put together a board game day. The leader hesitated as she said that based on past attempts, this particular type of group didn’t really respond to that idea as an interest for most of the children. Most of the “group type” were unschooled or relaxed homeschoolers. And then it hit me. When I’ve attended unschooling conferences, I rarely see children playing board games, although there are often those types of games available. But I always see a lot of unschooled children playing games such as Magic: The Gathering, hand-held video games, Dungeons & Dragons, video games, or Pokemon. And as I said in an earlier post, I hypothesize that many who are unschooled are right-brained learners.
That’s it! It all makes sense now. There are games that appeal to left-brained people and games that appeal to right-brained people! This realization made me immediately go to my most recent experiences. My right-brained daughter has now been married to her left-brained husband almost two years. One of my first bonding times with him was having him on our family beach trip while the two were dating, and we played board games on his initiation for much of the time. I was in heaven, because I’ve always like board games, but come to think about it, most of my children have had no interest. Since the two married and moved in three houses down from me (woohoo!), I go to their house every Sunday evening for game night.
In the meantime, my son-in-law introduced and taught my daughter Magic: the Gathering, one of his childhood games he had enjoyed. She had been a Pokemon girl herself, but she decided to learn it. She was hooked and together they collected many cards and created diverse decks. After playing one particular board game most Sundays (The Settlers of Zarahemla, a version of Settlers of Catan) my daughter suggested I learn to play Magic. Frankly, it held no interest or draw for me, but my relationships with my two loved ones were, so I decided to learn as a way of connecting with them.
And so the teaching began. They claim Magic to be a strategy game, and mind you, I love strategy games, thus, why I like board games. But I just wasn’t wrapping my head around this game at all. I also consider myself quite an intelligent person, and I was really questioning my abilities a month, then two, into the learning curve and still feeling helplessly lost. What was going on here!? Frankly, I realized at that point that maybe it was more right-brained oriented (though I hadn’t leaped to the holistic idea of the types of games one is attracted to indicates brain processing preference). I barely noticed the pictures whatsoever when I played. I zeroed in on the numbers, but then there were so many things to remember…abilities, attack and defend points, payment of lands, if I could attack without being killed, if I could defend, etc. (Yes, I know those of you who understand Magic are probably laughing at my slaughter of terminology as we speak!)
I’m thinking this is a left-brained trait, but I’m “loyal” (or is it predictable, controlled, or perfectionism?) to staying with one thing, ad nauseam. Finally, after not feeling like I was getting it after two months, I convinced myself to switch decks (from a Trample deck to a Spirit deck) and that version seemed to connect with me better, and I started to understand…a little bit. I truly had my eyes opened to being subjected to a process that made absolutely no sense to my way of viewing things. It certainly had nothing to do with intelligence, because I often smashed people when playing board games.
For my daughter, she tolerates board games. She’s not as naturally proficient at them as we left-brained family members. It’s especially evident in something like Scrabble, which I believe is highly left-brained. But put her with Pokemon or video games or now even Magic, she’s quite a force to be reckoned with. Now, you may be asking, but didn’t you say your son-in-law is left-brained? So why 
does he do well with Magic? Well, because males are more leaned toward right-brained traits, so his male gene contributed to his ability to enjoy certain right-brained attributes. I think the visual and imagination qualities can be evident in certain males. This can show up in the male-dominated enjoyment of video games.
So, what do you know, the reason all those board games didn’t get played with is because most of my children are right-brained dominant! I was the lone left-brained game player, and no one was interested. Likewise, I have had no interest in learning to play video games. Have no clue. It enthralls me that they can instantaneously know what to do and where to go in those things. Each type of game requires its own set of skills.
Now, I did have several children with autism who enjoyed playing left-brained games for a season. Why? Because many of these left-brained board games are very structured, predictable, and sequentially rule-based. Think of Monopoly, Candy Land, and Trouble. As evidence of my older son with autism’s draw to these games as a way to appease his need for predictability, I remember he 
would “stack the deck” of Candy Land when he was young. He would meticulously go through and arrange the deck so he knew exactly how the game would play out. And it wasn’t just about his wanting to win; sometimes he had himself win, and sometimes he had his opponent win. He just wanted to be able to predict it. It was really amusing and quite clever of him!
In conclusion, I love to play such games as Scrabble, Backgammon, and Trouble. My right-brained children gravitate to Magic: The Gathering, video games (especially RPGs), and Pokemon. One is not better than another. But I know we often try to get our children to play those left-brained games because of the sneaky “educational value” (i.e., left-brained school subject practice like math facts and money management), but the right-brained games are all about problem-solving, imagination and creativity, and global game playing, which are in high demand in our global economy today. I’m telling you, everywhere I look, there’s a right-brained/left-brained connection!
Question: What games do you or your children like to play? Why do you think so?
In our house, my RB daughter’s favorite games were Memory and Checkers. She hated everything else. I don’t think I ever got her to sit through a whole game of Chutes and Ladders! My LB kids love Life, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Scrabble, Blokus, card games like War, etc. I also notice differences in toy play. My RB kids both gravitated to the same toys, and played with them the same ways at the same ages. It was rather freakish! The only common ground in our house is Legos. But my LB kids like to follow directions, and my RB kids like to build rogue.
So what is the dividing line of the games? Strategy? Open-endedness? Multiple layers of complexity? It doesn’t seem to be visual spacial – I thought my RB daughter would love Blokus, but she hates it.
I’m trying to sift out the dividing line myself. I know my differentiating line in my book about how the children play was imagination versus reality. Left-brained children tend to play with a reality-based element and right-brained children with an imaginative element.
I’m thinking both your open-ended idea and multiple levels of complexity may have some merit.
I grew up playing card games and Scrabble, Parcheesi and Monopoly, checkers, what have you. Neither my Aspie dh nor my Aspie dd will play any of them with me. Well, dh will agree to play Scrabble about once every decade, but he will spend so long (as in half an hour per move) figuring out the maximum points he can score with the maximum amount of cutting off possibilities for my next play, that I’ll give up and do something else. He won’t play anything else. He bought Risk for dd one year (an out of character move to begin with), and after they set it up, they never touched it.
Dd went through a brief phase of board games when she was in an elementary-grade-level co-op and the other kids would pull them out at break times. She enjoyed the social aspect of the games, the comeraderie, but I always thought she liked the idea of the games more than the reality. She preferred, and still does, more active games.
She’s never seen a point to the types of card games with characters, skills, and points sorts of things. I think her mind works so exclusively in story-telling mode that this fragmentation of story (breaking down into separate bits) doesn’t work for her, but I’m not really sure. On the other hand, she loves anything like charades or acting games.
Dd also LOVES and is passionately addicted to listing games. Lists have always absorbed and calmed her. She loves Scattergories, Encore (a singing game we changed into listing all the songs we can that contain the word on any given card), word games like the one where you take a longish word of choice — chocolate, for instance — and list all the smaller words you can make up using those letters. She used to like all kinds of word games, actually: games like $25,000 Pyramid or Password, but we haven’t played any of them for ages.
We jointly invented tons of games when she was younger. When she was quite young, one of her favorites was a game we played in restaurants or cafes while waiting for drinks or food; we’d take a Beanie Baby along and we’d turn them into little characters doing an activity, using sugar bags, utensils, and anything on the table: surfer Beanie Baby, artist Beanie Baby, etc. The other person had to guess what character we were inventing. DD loved this and could literally spend hours playing it while I wanted to weep with boredom and cursed the day I ever thought it up.
See, Karen, your Aspie dd has that left-brained attribute probably because of the high verbal ability of most Aspies, with a little ASD trait of listing. So, it makes sense she could like word games and list games (which I think are more typically left-brained). What do you think? Of course, we know that girl right-brained learners can also be word-based because of the female gene component. And I LOVED $25,000 Pyramid! I would always make my hubby play with me. He was always way better at giving clues than me, though, probably because he could visualize it and then just describe it. I was always just searching for words and was VERY slow. Hhmmm. So, maybe your dd could be really awesome with her mix of right-brained pictures and Aspie word ability.
Funny about the made-up fantasy game with her stuffed animals! I definitely know the feeling of starting something to connect, and then having to continue on and on and on. Haha! Thanks for sharing!
My grandson’s strength would be any video game on any console or computer. However he has excelled at board games since he was 5 years old. He is now nine years old and continues to have the need to win. He loves any monopoly game. His favorite learning games are Speed Grammar and Speed Grammar. The most favorite is Check Math which is a game that originated in Australia. Check Math is full of strategy challenges as you move only to those spots that have numbers which are multiples of the checker that you are moving. Go To Press is also another game that he likes. I was suprised that he liked this one but he does not like to read. Yet he can read all the words on video games. As Cindy says, they will read when there is a need. He is very right brained in most cases but I have noticed a slight move to become more balanced. The is still hope for reading and writing but I have not found great games for that. Geography is another area that he loves any game based on this subject. He loves Stack The States and Stack The Countries which are the best apps on ipad. But these apps requre visual ability which that is his strength. Being left- brained, I have had a struggle playing these games with him. The bottom line is that I am not a gamer but a reader. My grandson learns best with games, puzzles, apps and any image.
I can’t remember, Mary, is your grandson a builder type? Does he also happen to be on the geeky side of an autism spectrum? Because his gaming interests seem right up the alley of my builder ASD son. He loved puzzley out type of strategy games, and those that had patterns. Of course, video games were a hit for my artist son and my builder son particularly. And I have fond memories of the computer game season for my three oldest.
We have a tall bookcase filed with games that all three play.
My inventor/electronics son is more into strategy board games such as Spy Alley, Battleship, Statego, or Chess. As for video games he likes Minecraft and Civilization.
My artist/bulder son is in to games like SET, Blokus, Amazing Labrynth, Q-bitz, Snapshots Across America, 10 Days in the USA, and Sequence States and Capitals. He’s also a Minecraft fan. On the iPad he enjoys geography, physics, and puzzle type apps.
My ASD/Dynamo son has loved sports and games since he was born. He used to turn anything into a game and it’s been the core of his learning and becoming verbal. Some of his pre-school favorites were Curious George A B See, Cranium Hullabaloo, Sequence for Kids, Gobblet Jr, Animal Tracks Memory, and What’s in the Cat’s Hat. In K/1st he enjoyed Communicate Junior, Pictureka, LCR, Monopoly – the full version, Rat a Tat Cat, Pirate Talk, Make N Break, Mancala, and Apples to Apples Junior. He’s in 2nd now and into 7 ate 9, Spill and Spell, Spot It, Yahtzee, Muggins Knockout, Baseball Scrabble, The Question Challenge, Eco Flux, and Capture the Gag. He also plays sports video games, sports out back, and sports in the basement over the winter. I also keep an eye out for indoor sports he can play on the main level of the house, such as foam ping pong, Nerf hoops on the back of doors, Nok Hockey, Carpet Hockey, magnetic darts, and balloons. He’s also loved the Super Duper Publications occupational therapy decks and considers them a game. On the iPad I keep an eye out for free educational games for him to try.
We usually open a new game after Thanksgiving dinner to play together and they usually each get one for Christmas. On the other hand, toys that are typically popular usually went untouched here.
All the games you list for the various types of right-brained children in your home, Michele, seem to line up with what I would expect for each type. The only surprise I have is that your ASD! child is into sports!? I don’t know if I’ve heard of such a thing. Dynamo, yes, but ASD? I mean, I guess my builder son certainly had some ability in sports. For a short season, he was on a competitive boys gymnastics team and quite good. But, overall, his drive to do sports wasn’t there maybe because of the high level of people interaction that just didn’t interest him. My other ASD children just didn’t have the coordination for it (low muscle tone, awkward walk/stance, etc.). My (non ASD) dynamo is definitely into sports, and quite good at them. Do tell me more about what I haven’t seen often/before, I don’t think.
Very interesting post. I have a shelf full of board games that never get used. I do like yahtzee and play word games like scrabble and crossword puzzles online but games with a spinner or stack of cards bores me to tears. My kids call them Boring Games instead of board.
My RB son plays Minecraft and games like Sims and Zoo Tycoon. He has made his own board games based on his interests and does like to play those. for educational games he likes Stack the States and the logic games on Math Playground. Guess this makes sense for my builder boy.
My daughter floats between RB and LB. she loves sudoku and word puzzles. She plays video games like Pokemon and logic games.
What I notice is that the three of us prefer solitary games or games where we work together. We don’t like any games that involve competition. Is that a RB trait?
We have a visual family. One of our favourites is Pictionary. My dd7 and dd5 also like all the counting and the complexity of Monopoly. Dd5 is into games of all sorts, really. Checkers and chess are two of his favourites, though he doesn’t generally play by traditional rules — every game begins with new rules. He likes three-in-a-row-type games like Tic Tac Toe; often he creates a non-traditional board to play. All sorts of card games. Blokus. Rush Hour and other logic puzzles — do they count? And we make up board games based on things we are studying at the time. They also like Candyland and cooperative games; with these, we make up stories as we go along. Did I mention that I think we are on the RB side?
I would say that the interest in Monopoly, card games, and logic puzzles comes from an interest in math.
How interesting, Victoria, that your right-brained family almost seems to bring a creative aspect to any left-brained oriented game played. For instance, making up new rules each time, using a game non-traditionally, and creating a story along with it. Very cool! Thanks for sharing