My biggest parenting mistake

My biggest parenting mistake? Teaching my kids how to play Pinochle. Why, you ask? Seems like such a good idea, you say? Well, yes, but don’t all bad ideas sound good at the beginning? Hey, let’s take a romantic walk near the cemetery. Hey, let’s use this old jar of mayonnaise because it’s only a month past the sell-by date. Hey, let’s buy this cheap car because saving money is important. All great suggestions if you don’t mind ghostly moans, food poisoning, and losing an engine on I-95.

At first, teaching our kids how to play Pinochle seemed like a win-win decision. The kids would learn a valuable life skill (how to lose) and we parents would enjoy some valuable family time together (while we won). At first, all went according to plan. The kids lost while my husband and I won. All. The. Time. It was a thing of beauty. I seized this opportunity to teach my kids another valuable skill: how to trash-talk your opponent. Ah, good times. After every victory, the sun shone brighter. Food tasted better. Doing laundry felt like a pleasure, not a chore.

Then my offspring started to win. Not once or twice. Oh, no. They embarked on an epic winning streak we couldn’t break. Every single time we played cards, they won. We backed off on all the trash talk. They still won. We played aggressively. They won. We played conservatively. They won. We distracted them with freshly baked cookies. We offered to take them to Europe if they gave us a fifty-point lead. We used a secret language during the bidding portion of the game. Didn’t matter. They won every time. Unbeaten over the past six months.

The moral of the story is this: YES, teach your kids how to play Pinochle, but do not teach them math. That way, you can calmly explain to them that zero plus seventeen equals one hundred and ninety-nine. You’ll win every time.

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This post brought to you by Pinochle Parents.

We used to win. Now we cry.

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