scrabble
The Bee has developed a taste for Scrabble lately. It’s kind of an obsession, really. She’s challenged me to three games in the past 24 hours. Last night, we played one-on-one, which she found unsatisfying. Tonight, I played against her and her dad.
I’m excited that the Bee likes this game, which was a favorite of mine in childhood. I remember playing my own mother when I was a kid. I’m willing to let her have help from her father, but I’m not willing to dumb down my own play to lose against her, in part because my mother would never do that when playing me.
My mother and her sisters were rabid Scrabble junkies. I told the Bee last night, when she got frustrated with it, that I didn’t beat my mom at Scrabble until I was about 12, and that she should strive to beat me when she’s 11, but not to worry if she can’t do it now.
The pace of a game involving an eight-year-old is slower than I remember from my own eight-year-old days of playing. The rules about when you can build off another word, while obvious to me now, clearly require some internalization.
Like so many things in parenting, one of the things I’ve realized while teaching the Bee the game, is how much patience one of my own parents showed me, long ago.
Bumblebee Sweet Potato 