Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Bed Time Quests & Dinner Games for 3-5 year olds, published by Gunnar Zarncke on June 23, 2024 on LessWrong.
I like these games because they are playful, engage the child and still achieve the objective of getting the child to bed/eat dinner etc. Requires creativity and some slack.
Excerpt from Shohannah's post:
Recently I had the bright idea to give up on being a regular parent. Mostly cause regular parenting practices melt my brain. But then I wondered … does it have to be boring?
[...]
But no. It's all culture and it's all recent culture and you can decide to do Something Else Instead. Really.
So as someone who craves mental stimulation above the pay grade of the 3 to 5 revolutions around the sun my daughters have managed so far … I figured I'd just make up New Rules.
All the time.
So far we've been going for two weeks and the main areas are bedtime routines for my eldest (5) and dinner games for all of us (5, 3, and myself). I noticed I seem to have an easy time generating new and odd rule sets every day, and then started wondering if maybe more parents would enjoy this type of variety in their childcare routines and would want to tap into some of the ideas I've been coming up with. So in case that's you, here is what I've found so far!
[...]
Magic Time
Kiddo is the parent. You are the kiddo. Except, the kiddo is still bringing themselves to bed and not you. They get to tell you what to do and take care of you. You will have to listen. I completely recommend performing a lot of obstructive behavior and misunderstanding basic instructions. This was one of the most popular games and may show some insight into how your child would prefer to be parented, or feels about your parenting.
and fourteen games/rulesets more.
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