I’ve always liked to have games to play at the dinner table – games to get to know each other better or to start great (or even mediocre) conversations. One of my favorites is something I call Nice Dice. When my kids were young they would sometimes bicker at the dinner table. I grabbed a six-sided blank dice and wrote each of our initials on five of the sides (there were, obviously, 5 of us); then we added the dog’s initial to the 6th side. Here are the instructions:
- Take turns rolling the dice.
- Say something nice about the person whose initial you rolled.
- Compliments must be sincere (i.e., no insults masked as compliments, such as I like the hat you are wearing that covers your hideous hair).
- If you roll yourself, you have to give yourself a sincere compliment.
If you have only numbered dice, simply assign each person a number. If you have too many people, get a dice with more sides. 🙂
One year we did a special edition nice dice on people’s birthdays. Each birthday, we went around the table and rolled a six-sided dice. The roller then said that many nice things about the birthday person. The birthday person (note that I am avoiding all gender-related landmines here) also should roll the dice for themselves and say the rolled number of nice things about themselves. (This is surprisingly hard for some people to do.)
Note that it can be quite uncomfortable for some people to receive this many compliments – it’s ok, it will get easier with practice.
