I've always felt that teaching children that rules exist in games for a reason is important, so I never played board games with DD until she was old enough to play them properly. On the other hand, if she wants to invent a different way to play the game, that's fine, as long as all players agree to play that way. So I guess that's still playing by the rules.
I figure that game rules encourage fairness and if a child doesn't play by the rules and just makes them up as he goes along (usually to his own advantage, I'm sure), eventually he will wind up having to unlearn that or nobody will want to play with him!
DD is 6 now, BTW, and we started with really simple games when she was about 3 - we had "Doctor Hedgehog" by HABA games, which we loved - and we've now progressed to games such as Cranium Cadoo, Clue Jr., etc.
I figure that game rules encourage fairness and if a child doesn't play by the rules and just makes them up as he goes along (usually to his own advantage, I'm sure), eventually he will wind up having to unlearn that or nobody will want to play with him!
DD is 6 now, BTW, and we started with really simple games when she was about 3 - we had "Doctor Hedgehog" by HABA games, which we loved - and we've now progressed to games such as Cranium Cadoo, Clue Jr., etc.
