My Niece Is 7 and Says “I Can’t” — So We Made a Board Game Together
The first sign came at the kitchen table, when Emma looked at the blank sheet of paper and announced, “I don’t know how to make a game.”
It was a Saturday, and I’d decided we were going to do something other than watch cartoons. Earlier that morning, she’d wanted to draw a cat, but after two strokes of the marker she crumpled the paper and said, “I can’t.” That’s a phrase I hear a lot from her. It’s not that she’s incapable—she reads above grade level, she remembers every rule of every board game we play. It’s more that she’s already worried about getting it wrong.
So instead of suggesting another drawing, I pulled out a piece of printer paper, a marker, a coin, and one dice. I told her we were going to invent our own board game from scratch. There were no instructions. No right way. And that, apparently, was terrifying.
“You want me to draw the game board?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t make it fair.”
“Who says it has to be fair?”
That got her attention. Emma is the youngest in her family, so she spends a lot of time negotiating rules. She looked at me suspiciously, like I was setting her up.
I reminded her of the time we played Snakes and Ladders and she decided the snake at square 87 didn’t lead down to square 6, but to square 50. “You changed the rules and we all agreed. Making up a game is just doing that before, not after.”
She picked up the marker. “Can I do stickers on it?”
“Absolutely.”
And just like that, the blank paper became a project. We weren’t going to build a windmill or write a play. We were going to make something small enough to finish before lunch, with a picture of a dog in the center. That was her first decision: the game is about a dog named Burrito who delivers pizza to houses. The goal is to get to the doghouse to eat his own pizza.
It took about forty minutes. She chose to make the board that same morning for better quality (her words). We folded the paper into a rough path with a start square and a finish square. She drew little houses along the way. Some squares are labeled “Lost a pizza — go back 2 spaces.” Others say “Smart dog shortcut — jump ahead 3.” She invented the rules faster than I could write them down. For a while, I was the official scribe, but she insisted on writing the yellow square text herself, and I had to stop myself from fixing the “gud dog” on that one space. It’s still spelled “gud” and we both know it’s perfect.
The game wasn’t symmetrical. The path curved back on itself at one point, so you could land on a square and be right next to the start—or far away. It didn’t matter. We played three rounds. I won the first, and she said, “That’s because you had a good dice roll. Burrito doesn’t care.” She won the second and did a little hip-hop dance. The third round we never finished because her mom texted that lasagna was ready, but Emma insisted we leave the board out on the table.
I was just happy she didn’t say “I can’t.”
Since then, we’ve made a card game about alien cats and a “reaction wheel” that tells you to act like a robot or say your age backwards. The board game is still her favorite, mostly because she built it herself. But here’s what I noticed as her aunt and occasional weekend babysitter: it wasn’t the final product that made her feel good. It was the decisions along the way.
That’s the thing with confidence at this age. It doesn’t come from hearing “You did great!” after everything. It comes from making a lot of small choices without someone hovering, and also without someone letting go too fast. A blank piece of paper is huge and scary. A board game with a dog and pizza is a small world she controls. When she picked the theme, we said “Okay.” When she decided to add a “mud puddle” square that sends you back to the start, we didn’t push back. We just played it and laughed when she landed on it.
If you’re looking for a similar activity with a 7-year-old, I’d say start with a rule that isn’t a rule: “We’re not aiming for ‘good’ today. We’re aiming for finished.” Then give them a tiny amount of structure. I told Emma the game needs a start and a finish, but how they connect is up to her. That way she wasn’t staring at “invent anything” — she was just filling in a gap.
Also, let them decide something that doesn’t matter. The token doesn’t have to be a game piece. We used a coin with a piece of tape stuck on it and drew a face on the tape. Seven-year-olds love taping things. Let them do the taping.
And when they say “I can’t,” don’t jump to encouragement too fast. That actually backfires with Emma. If I say “Sure you can, you’re amazing!” she just digs in deeper. What works better is to say, “Okay, let’s break it down. Which part is the hardest?” She’ll say, “Drawing a rain cloud.” So we practice drawing a rain cloud on scrap paper. Three strokes. Then we fold it into a game board so it doesn’t have to be perfect. She’s confident as long as it’s for the game, not for display. The game absorbs the imperfection.
The other thing I’ve noticed: a 20-minute craft isn’t going to rewire a shy person. But it gives her a reference point. The next time she says “I can’t tell a joke,” I can say, “But you made a whole game about Burrito the pizza dog. You can decide what’s funny.” She still claims she can’t tell a joke. But she did write a knock-knock joke on the back of the board game. It’s not a good joke, but she memorized it.
We’re not at the point where she volunteers to lead a class presentation or raise her hand first. That might not even be the point. Emma is a quiet kid who likes small, structured risks. Making up games is the exact size of risk she can take. It lets her be the authority in a game where the only rule is what she writes down.
We haven’t finished the third game we started, by the way. It’s still on the floor in the living room, half-drawn, with a dice balanced on the edge of a piece of cardboard. She said we’d finish it “next Saturday.” I believe her. I also know that if we run out of time, we can just make up a rule that lets us stop in the middle. That’s the beauty of a board game you invented. You get to decide what “done” means.
For now, the important thing is that she looked at a blank piece of paper and said, “It’s about Burrito.” Not “I can’t.” Just “It’s about Burrito, and he needs a hat.” And then she drew him a hat.
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