The Girl simply loves playing games: Candy Land, checkers, Go Fish, “the memory game” (Never just “memory” for her), Curious George — you name it, she’ll play it.

The long-standing challenge for us as parents has always been teaching her to win with humility and lose with dignity. It’s tough to teach a child something you yourself are not good at, for it must be said that I don’t always lose with dignity myself. Chess is about the only game I play, and while I don’t pitch a fit, my pulse quickens at a loss, and I’m soon berating myself for my obvious mistakes.

Yet by their very nature, these games make excellent benchmarks for social skills development. There are countless metrics:

• How far into the game does the first fuss appear?
• How long does the first fuss last?
• Once it subsides, does the first frustration return immediately?
• Is the Girl capable of finishing the game or has she worked herself into an irreversible tizzy?
• When it begins to look like a loss is inevitable, does she give up or continue playing?

Recent gaming adventures have shown that L is developing a tolerance for the inevitable eventual loss, an ability to recover quickly from initial frustrations, and the poise to win and lose well. It was, in short, truly a phase.