playing chess with my kid

The prince, who is six, is learning to play chess; one of his best friends takes a chess elective at his weekend language school and the prince got into it and also picked up a book at a recent book sale and in short, kids’ brain plasticity is apparently a thing with respect to chess proficiency as well as language acquisition because he’s getting pretty good. Only yesterday this happened (he was playing white, I was playing black):

1. e3; d5
2. c3; e6
3. g3; Bc5
4. a3; Nf6
5. Qa4+; c6
6. d3; Nd7
7. f3; Nb6
8. Qxc6+; bxc6

And he was maaad when I took his queen. He agreed that he would have done the same thing if I’d left my queen vulnerable, but whew. Mainly he was mad that he was in that position and didn’t realize it. This was after an earlier game that I won after he didn’t take my queen when he could have, and he very correctly came and shook my hand when it was over . . . and then hugged me and cried on my shoulder and said “losing can actually really help us learn to play better.”

So I’m definitely the mother of the year over here. But I am the opposite of a skilled player; I’m sure my only advantage is age, not experience. (He can beat me at least two out of three times at Connect Four, and beating me at chess isn’t far behind.)