Tried teaching my nephew a eurogame and he made up his own rules

I sat down with my 9 year old nephew last weekend to play Viticulture, thinking he'd get into the wine making theme. He totally ignored the victory point track and just started trading grapes for imaginary snacks he wanted. Has anyone else had a kid completely ignore your carefully explained rules and just make up their own?

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ward.fiona4mo ago

Honestly, isn't it possible he just didn't find the game fun enough to care about the real rules? Kids know when they're being sold a "learning experience" and they'll ditch it fast if it feels like school. Maybe the winemaking theme just didn't click for him the way trading imaginary snacks did.

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wren_walker624mo ago

Oh man, that is the most accurate thing I've read all day. My niece did the exact same thing with Splendor - completely ignored the whole 'collect gems and buy cards to get prestige points' thing and just started hoarding all the red chips because 'they look like strawberries.' She spent the whole game making me 'buy' her imaginary strawberry lemonade with them. Kids have this amazing ability to look at any set of rules and go 'nah, here's what we're ACTUALLY doing now.' I think they can smell when a game is trying to teach them something and they'd rather just have fun on their own terms. Your nephew turning grapes into imaginary snacks sounds way more engaging than actual Viticulture anyway, honestly.

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