Children Cheating at Games

An article titled No One Likes a Cheater, But No One Likes a Stickler, Either, The Letter and Spirit of Recess Law, by Emily Bazelon at Slate.com caught my interest. The author described a situation where her son questioned the an incident where his playmates had cheated. While reading the article, several points came to mind.

First, research in child development indicates that children are binary thinkers, particularly the youngest of children. By binary thinkers, I mean that they think in terms of either/or without nuance. Asking children to weigh situations and consider fairness as well as flexibility when confronted with cheating while playing games is a lot to expect. I think children need concrete answers since that is the level of their thinking.

The other thought I had was that as adults it sounds so 'high minded" to say that "remember to be fair" and "we need to follow the rules" to children when other children aren't following the same advice. Only to a point that I agree with this idea. I think there are times that children need to adopt the "when in Rome" attitude, particularly during play. Most important, I believe, we need to teach children how to adapt to situations. Let's teach them when to be flexible and when to be firm since all situations aren't the same. Learning judgement and discretion is a valuable lesson.