Don't Get Board

Many of us play board games. Because sometimes the cable company is doing maintenance on your street, and maybe your internet provider isn't working, and possibly aliens are hovering directly above the house and disrupting all forms of connecting to Netflix or logging on to Angry Birds or Farm Heroes. And when all of that is going on, well, what are you gonna do, read a book? Those are the moments that Settlers of Catan was made for.

Now it's hard to play against yourself in board games, although for some of us that's probably what it takes to emerge victorious from a hotly contested round of Clue or Monopoly. I mean, unless your Australia-Asia strategy is perfect, there's pretty much no other way to win at Risk. For the most part, however, it takes three or four other people to really enjoy a good board game. And sometimes the only people you can find to join in the raucous good times are, well, your children.

The point is that a parenting article recently ran in the Washington Post written by a father who sort of, but not really all that seriously, dances around the topic of whether or not a good parent should occasionally let his or her children, you know, bag the W. Look the other way when it's obvious where that Ticket to Ride route is going. Pretend that you need more information before betting on the white camel in Camel Up. These things can be arranged.

It's an interesting philosophical question, and the article's author doesn't really get into it, instead preferring to metaphorically throw up his hands, while noting for the record that he makes his kids clean the bathroom when he catches them cheating. The real question, though, is why are you playing board games with your children instead of using your LabSim account to do a little in-home tech education and learn about IT concepts and practices?

A board game is entertaining and passes the time on a rainy Saturday afternoon. But learning how to troubleshoot a printer or connect clients to a network is the sort of thing that could spur a lifelong interest in information technology. We're not saying you should never play Monopoly or 7 Wonders with your kids again. There are other things you can do with your LabSim account, however, than just study for your next cert exam. Also, it might get you out of grilling Professor Plum all over again.