Isabella is becoming proficient at a few simple video games on the tablet.

She sits with my wife and plays “Bubble Witch Saga 3,” a game she refers to as “bubbles.”

I think it’s kinda similar to the popular game Candy Crush, although I’ve personally never played either.

My wife tells her they can play two rounds, and when those two rounds are done, the game is over. It takes 10, maybe 15 minutes for them to play.

One area where we have not yet delved, but may soon, is into the world of board games. Isabella will be 4 in July, and she’s at the age where board games could be fun.

However, after a co-worker referred me to a recent Wall Street Journal article, maybe board games aren’t such a good idea.

In an article with the headline “Why do parents cheat at board games? To lose as fast as possible,” it explains that these games can drone on and parents are much too busy to play a board game for hours.

I remember when I was a kid, my brother or my friends and I would play Monopoly, and that game could last days, if not weeks.

We’d do things like “break the bank,” to eliminate debt to keep the game going. Or we’d put a bunch of money in the middle of the board, so if you landed on Free Parking, you’d get a windfall of extra cash.

Risk was similar, especially if only two of us were playing. It could take forever to rule the world. As the losing player’s territories shrunk, we’d just fortify one area with so many men there was no way to take that area over.

However, these were games we’d play with friends, not parents.

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In the Wall Street Journal article, it spoke of family games like Chutes and Ladders, Uno and Candy Land.

Parents in the article said they’d cheat to help their kids win just to shorten games. One parent said after 45 minutes, they need a game to be over because they have to cook dinner and go to bed.

As I read this, all I could think of was, how are kids going to learn the disappointment of losing and the motivation to win next time?

The author of the article, Greg Bensinger, was on the same wavelength, because as I was thinking that, he quoted someone in the article saying it.

The article also pointed out something that bothered me a bit: Hasbro is releasing a Monopoly version later this summer called the “Cheaters Edition.”

A game that encourages cheating? Haven’t we seen that enough between Olympians, baseball players, college basketball and Tour de France racers? Do we really need to encourage it in our board games?

Maybe if the end result is to finish a game quickly, I guess. But then, why play?

It seems like we’re always looking for ways to speed things up.

For instance, Major League Baseball has been working for years to figure out how to shorten game times.

My question is, why? I love watching baseball and sometimes a long game, especially on a Saturday afternoon, is a nice escape.

Maybe board game makers need to create two kinds of games – those that can be finished quickly on weeknights, and those that can be played longer on weekends, when parents have more time.

If I’m going to cheat while playing Isabella, I’m most likely going to cheat to win! I’m competitive, and I hate losing. I would rather teach her my passion for winning rather than have her think winning is easy and daddy is always the loser.

Some may disagree, but in my opinion, cheating to lose is not a good example to set, is it?

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