Wargames

Which is worse: that when I play Tic-Tac-Toe with Siena I don't let her win -- or that she still manages to beat me?

Siena's been playing Tic-Tac-Toe for months. And I think that it's a good game to introduce early on. First, it gets kids writing letters, if only "X" and "O." Second, any game-playing is an opportunity to teach rules of good sportsmanship: play fair, obey the rules, take turns, and take winning and losing with equanimity -- which isn't how I put it with Siena, but you get the idea. Third, it's a game that Siena can play with any grown-up, which is great when far-flung relatives pop in and want to instantly connect with their little granddaughter/niece.

But everyone else who plays with Siena lets her win. The most flagrant offender in this regard is Pop-Pop. On our last family vacation, the guy let her win so many times that even Siena started getting suspicious. But how can you fault him? Who would be so competitive that he couldn't let a three-year-old win a head-to-head competition? Who would value anything higher than the happiness of such a sweet, little girl?

Evidently, her father.

It's not that I need to beat the child at anything. It's not that I get any satisfaction out of beating her. It's that Siena can tell when adults are playing for real or just playing around. We all have an intuition as to when we're being patronized or condescended to. And I want my daughter to get, at least from me, the respect that comes from an honest competition. I don't think that Pop-Pop is doing anything wrong. It's just that grandparents and parents have different responsibilities and prerogatives.

So when I play Siena in tic-Tac-Toe, I play to win. And of course, most times the games end in a draw. I probably wouldn't play to win if the game didn't have such intrinsically low chances of anyone winning. But as it is, when we play I expressly play to win. And this certainly hasn't dissuaded Siena from playing. In fact, a marathon session of Tic-Tac-Toe propmpted this post.

And of course, when I win I explain to her where she went wrong. That's another great thing about playing Tic-Tac-Tow: it's such an easy game to understand that even a three-year-old can grasp the basics of tactics and strategy -- and learn from her mistakes. That's where this gets interesting.

We just played about a dozen games. I won once. Siena won twice. How in the heck, you may ask, did this happen? Isn't Daddy kind of smart? And thirty years older than his daughter?

All I can say is that sometimes you get cocky, and forget the one lesson about Tic-Tac-Toe that Siena's learned quite well: always play defensively. If you simply look to keep your enemy from winning, you will never lose. Not that this is a universal rule: as Marty Schottenheimer could tell you, you can't win at football by playing not to lose. But it works well in Tic-Tac-Toe, and Siena's learned it. She knows to go wherever she has to so that I won't get three ina row, and she follows that rule pretty much all the time. Daddy, however, is too smart for his own good. He tries to set up the can't-lose positions, where you can win in either of two moves -- and ends up overlooking the two-in-a-row that Siena's got lined up nicely. Good girl.

And even when she plays Daddy, Siena gets to win now and again.

Maybe it's time to dust off Risk.

The Lazy "S" Ranch

Good to be back. I've neglected this blog for almost a year, while I focused on polishing and marketing my screenplays. That having proved a complete waste of time, I've decided to return to the only writing of mine that's ever earned any praise. No point in trying to comprehensively update you all on the change in Siena from last July to now. Let's just return to our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.

Siena can write her name now. Or rather, she tries. Or rather, if you saw what she wrote you'd immediately recognize it as saying "Siena" (she's not up to trying her last name yet; that'll be our summer project) but you'd just as quickly recognize that what she's writing isn't quite right.

You have no idea how tough it is to write some letters until you see a four-year-old try to write them. And yes, though her birthday's in September this kid is, for all intents and purposes, a four-year-old. She's ninetieth percentile in height and weight, and puts on makeup before going to preschool for goodness' sake. Okay, it's sunblock-lip gloss and an empty brush from Mommy's old makeup, but still. Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah. Some letters can be darn tough when you're learning them. Does the "E" have three little arms or four? Does the "N" go up-down-up or down-up-down? Fortunately, Siena's not only gotten these two letters right; she's actually learned from her mistakes making these letters. But one letter persists in giving Siena trouble: "S."

How do you screw up the "S?" Assuming that you've got the motor skills to write any letters, that is. Some letters really are easier to write than others. "I," for example. "A" was also pretty easy, I suspect because it involves only straight lines. This is not the case for "M" or "N." Sure, they look like they're just straight lines. But when you write an "A" you pick up the pencil three times. When you write "M," you write one big line with three turns. That's three chances to screw up the letter, and over the months Siena's taken every chance.

But now she can write those other letters pretty well. Sure, her spacing can be off, leading to a very scrunched "Birthday" after a billboard-sized "Happy." But for the most part, she can write quite well. "S," however, remains a stickler.

I see her struggle with this every morning. At school, right beside the parents' sign-in sheet, there's a separate sign-in sheet for the students. Siena's group, the Starfish, ranges from two-and-a-half to four years old. So you get a broad range of developmental skills, and you can see how far along everyone is in their name-writing. Some kids' spaces are perpetually blank; they have absolutely no interest in writing their names, and parents aren't pushing it -- and I'm the first to admit that they might be right about that. Other kids have recently turned four, and can write their names quite well. Siena's up there with the top of the pack -- and I do care about these things, almost as much as her grandparents. Every now and then she gives us an "E" with four legs (what do you call them, then?) but by and large she writes quite well. Except for the "S."

What does she do wrong? Her esses (a real world; check the Scrabble dictionary) are flat on their backs. They look like loopy, backwards ens (another proper word, whatever Blogger's spell-check says. Heck, Blogger thinks that "Blogger" is a typo). Lord knows, I don't miss a chance to point this out to her. I'm not one of those parents who tells his kid that her every poop smells like potpourri. And while I'm well aware that I could slide into being one of those parents who tells his kid that her potpourri smells like poop, I feel that I'm right to politely and constructively correct her on her esses.

Now, why does she persist in making this mistake, after months of patient instruction and correction by Daddy? I suspect that "S" is just a tougher letter for kids than others -- because of how you move the pen. I suspect that we all write "S" like I do: start at the top, then move left, then down, then right, then down, then back left. God, who else could make writing the letter "S" sound so complicated? Anyway, whenever Siena tries to write "S" this way, she hesitates, trying to follow orders, but then the pen heads south instead of west. I can totally believe that it's a physical development issue; she can't write left yet, just like Zoolander can't turn left (just lost everyone over thirty; come back, people).

And Siena's corroborated this hypothesis -- yes, my daughter has become a guinea pig -- by coming up with her own workaround for writing "S": she does it backwards -- right, up, left, up, right -- and it comes out flawless. She doesn't do it all the time, as if she knows that she should be trying to do it the right way, results be damned. But she knows that, one way or another, she can write a proper "S."

I suppose that I shouldn't be too worried about all this. After all, she knows her way around a laptop, can surf the Web, knows a few of the States, and can handle some very easy arithmetic. Come to think of it, I should probably be worried about myself.