The other day, I was searching for something when I stumbled upon this photo.

My daughter was barely a year and a half old—and we were already playing board games together. Hopp Hopp Häschen was the very first game we actually played by the rules.

The sweetest and most memorable thing about it was that she had her own way of rolling the die: she’d sort of swing her hand forward from behind her back in this unique little motion.

She recently turned eight, and luckily, we’re still playing board games. Her current favorite is Patchwork. When I first taught her how to play, she beat me. She hasn’t won since—but it doesn’t seem to bother her at all. She keeps experimenting: she focuses on buttons, aims for the 7x7 grid, tries to cover everything, watches how I play. She gets it—she’s close—and most importantly, she enjoys it.

I often get asked how to get kids today interested in board games. (We’ve written more about that [here] and [here].) But honestly, I don’t think it’s all that complicated: play a lot yourself, keep games visible and accessible, and chances are—though no guarantees—it’ll spark their interest too.

And if not, that’s okay. Maybe something else exciting and valuable is capturing their attention. Still, it feels incredibly good to look back at the journey: the games we played, how we gradually moved on to more complex ones, how she picked up the idea that winning doesn’t really matter—what matters is having a great time with a great game.
And how her own taste in games is slowly taking shape.

Now her little sibling is almost one. Maybe this Christmas, we’ll begin their own board game journey—together.