I played my niece recently in a game of ludo and was trying to lose on purpose, without her knowing. This prompted me to write some thoughts about that:
My niece is five. She is competitive in the way that only children who haven’t yet learned to disguise it can be. She wants to win. She should win.
So I let her.
Not obviously. That’s the point. If you let a child win obviously, they know. The win is hollow. You’ve given them nothing except the faint sense that they’re being managed. So you play properly, up to a point. You make the right moves. Then, at a moment that doesn’t announce itself, you make the wrong one. You lose a piece you didn’t need to lose. You miss a turn you should have taken. The game tips. She wins. She believes it.
This is harder than it sounds. You have to model her experience, not just your position. You have to know the game well enough to lose it without leaving fingerprints.
I thought about this recently and realised: it’s one of the most cognitively interesting things I do at a board game table. And it only works because I know what I’m doing.
full post here for anyone interested