The Boy had no homework tonight, so we played Scrabble, which was sort of assigned as homework when you don’t have homework. “Play a word game,” the instructions said, and what better word game than the word game?

We played the basic version of Scrabble Junior, which has words laid out for young players — good for working on spelling and reading. We looked through the instructions but couldn’t find anything on how to play that version. The back of the board is a more traditional, blank graph for players to make their own words, and the instructions dealt exclusively with that, so we made up our own rules.

A pre-game shot when E realized, with K’s help, that he had “CVS.”

We could, in short, build words letter by letter, and one only got a point when one finished a word. E got the first point, finishing “ball” like a champ.

But at one point, I finished a word knowing that the Boy could have finished it in the following turn. K had had the opportunity to do it earlier, but he’d have fallen behind, so she elected not to take the point from him. I was the only one with no points, and I decided to offer him a learning opportunity.

He was not happy.

Storming off to the living room, he declared, “I’m not playing!” At first, we tried to get him back through his competitive spirit: “Okay, you’ll just lose your turns.”

“I don’t care!”

We needed more drastic measures, so I simply and firmly instructed him to return. “This is not good sportsmanship. There is no need to get upset because someone else gets a point. No one else at the table was upset when you got points. Indeed, we were all happy for you. Now, calm down, sit down, and play with a mature young man.”

A few minutes later, he drew a G, which meant he could finish “dog” and “grapes” for two points. (We were playing one point per word, not one point per letter of completed words.)

In the end, he came in last place, but we were all separated by single points, and by then, he didn’t care. Hungry, he didn’t even stick around to count points.

Mission accomplished.