I don’t think I need to worry about my daughter being too “girly.” She doesn’t divide the world into “girl things” and “boy things”. If something interests her, she wants to try it, and she won’t rest until she does.
That’s why she and I go to war today. When I introduced the kids to Warhammer, a war game played with miniatures, a few months ago she wanted to play. Granted, she lost intterest part way through our introductory game, but she regained it in spades after watching her brother play against me last month, especially when one of her male friends from school announced he wanted to watch a game some time.
I’ve got the day off work, so today’s the day. My not-so-noble knights will invade the realm of the wood elves. Mind you this has never gone well for me. My brother would regularly thrash my little sissy-boy knights with his wood elves and send them whimpering back to their ladies. I don’t have a good record against them.
Mind you, I would rather be using a different army, but with the size of the army Emma chose, for me to field something similar with another army would require more miniatures than I have. Each army is built using “points”. Each model costs a certain number of points depending on how effective it is. Armored knights tend to be worth more points than regular foot soldiers. And I have a lot of knight miniatures, since they were cheap and easy to come by when I first started playing.
I have a feeling this will be an important game, though. If Emma doesn’t do well I suspect she’ll lose interest in the war aspect of the game and stick with painting the miniatures, something in which she’s shown great interest and ability. Her painting skills are nearly on par with mine, and I’ve had years more practice.
But no matter what happens in the game she’ll immediately change gears. She recently became curious about role-playing games, and has been putting pressure on me to teach her how to play. As soon as this battle is over she’ll be after me to play D&D with her. I don’t think she’s ready, but she may surprise me.
She’s good at that.