Empowering girls with an IRL support group for life

👻 Rebel Princess Halloween Stories

As the father of a five year old girl, I have received lots of advice and many tidbits of wisdom over the years. One of my favorites resonates even more with each birthday: "The days are long, but the years are short." It feels just like yesterday that I was trying to figure out her diapers in the middle of the night. Now, I'm trying to figure out her school curriculum.

Yet, I still have sleepless nights. It's not as often and also very different. It's less the manual labor of staying up with a baby and more the mental dread of raising a daughter in a world where identity is curated with filters and value is measured by likes. There's a big bad monster that haunts me occasionally and lets me know that it's coming soon for my daughter: TikTok.

In the blink of an eye, little girls go from being told stories that they are weaker, less intelligent and less capable than boys, to producing their own content in a marketplace where algorithms reward polarizing takes, oversexualized images, and curated perfection over authenticity or self-worth. Especially for parents like us working in the knowledge economy, it is a huge threat to model constant digital absorption over real-world connection. We risk raising girls who are more comfortable growing followers on social media than forming genuine friendships with lasting trust, empathy, and belonging that only IRL tribes can offer.

It is my dream to raise a child who finds joy in the real world - playing outdoors, joining in team sports, and discovering the vast world of modern board games that offer infinite in-person play time with friends. I invite you to join our community as we empower our Rebel Princesses to build their own IRL support groups for life.

🎲 Top 5 Board Game Recommendations for Rebel Princesses

For 2-3 years old:

• Gigamons (Thalia) - Memory game but with special powers; my daughter asked to play this game every day for 3 months when she was 3 years old!

• Little Red Riding Hood (Amazon) - A Candyland-like roll-and-move but played cooperatively and with a nice narrative of a little hero trying to save grandma

• Outfoxed (Thalia) - Clue-like game where you solve which fox stole the pie ; a cooperative game played together and perfect for kids that dislike competition

• Animal upon Animal (Amazon) - Jenga-like dexterity game that encourages tactile play with cute, colorful, wooden animal tokens

• Kayanak (Amazon) - A reimagined fish-in-a-barrel game with an element of surprise as an ice fishing, hole punching adventure; requires adult supervision

For 4-8 years old:

• Dragomino (Thalia) - Dominoes tile laying game but with dragons laying eggs; currently my daughter’s favorite game and a hit with her Rebel Princess friends

• Spinderella (Thalia) - Sorry-like (or ‘Mensch ärgere dich nicht!’ in German) racing game but with ants trying not to get caught by a magnetic spider

• Detective Charlie (Thalia) - Another Clue-like game with a cat detective ; a cooperative game that includes reading and time management

• Sleeping Queens 2 (eBay) - Uno-like card management game but with math and a very Rebel Princess-y theme of Queens saving Kings; DO NOT buy the original which has a problematic narrative, this sequel corrects that

• We Can Play: Women Who Changed the World (Amazon) - A simple variation of Trivial Pursuit focused on the chronological arrangement of the accomplishments of great women in history; easy to play as soon as she reads

For 9-12 years old:

• In the Footsteps of Marie Curie (Amazon) - A moderately complex resource management game played in Marie Curie’s life timeline. Conduct experiments and improve your workshop to help her win her double Nobel Prize.

• Ada’s Dream (eBay) - A complex alternate history game where players climb tech trees to help Ada Lovelace achieve her dream of building the first computer; tough but satisfying gameplay!

• Herstory (Spieltastisch) - A light strategy game where players act as authors doing research and writing stories about remarkable women of history.

• Chronicles of Light (eBay) - A cooperative game with familiar Disney heroines taking missions to drive back shadows and restore the Light ; gameplay is light and easy to grasp but theme of fighting with evil is best reserved for older girls

• Votes for Women (FantasyWelt) - A serious theme of the women’s suffrage movement wrapped around a moderately complex and completely immersive area control game mechanics, only for the most mature Rebel Princesses.

 🧰 The missing piece in the modern Parenting Toolkit

I believe that board games are underutilized in our parenting toolkit because many of us grew up on mindless roll-and-move games that lacked imagination; while today’s modern board games are rich with strategy, storytelling, and creativity, offering meaningful play that captivates kids and keeps adults genuinely engaged too. If you’re immediately thinking of Monopoly (or worse Uno/Mau Mau), that’s part of the problem!

Other forms of entertainment, especially digital ones like apps and video games, are easily accessible and require less parental intervention. However, they only serve to funnel our daughters even faster to the nightmare many of us fear: the social media doom scroll. By investing time now in her formative years, I hope to build credits in my daughter’s time bank, which could become very valuable when she’s a teenager.

Worried about time spend on learning and teaching board games? Some ideas for you:

Don’t fret, just play: Ultimately, the game and the rules don’t matter (as long as they are Rebel Princess Certified ✅👇). It’s more important for your daughter and you (Yes, YOU!) to share something you both enjoy. The best modern board games are easy to learn but have a depth that allow for new layers to be uncovered, numerous strategies to be explored, and fresh stories to be told over time. There’s no need to ever play Uno again after your daughter turns 4 years old. 🙏

Outsource learning the rules: If the alternative is screen time anyway, what’s another 5-10 minutes online to listen to a rules tutorial? All the games above have links to short “How to Play” videos. There are even apps that offer an interactive way of teaching popular and some more complex modern games.

Join a community: An even better way to outsource learning is to join a community of families who are all invested in finding ways to enjoy time together IRL. In the Rebel Princess Community, we have life-long board game hobbyists who are parents themselves and meet regularly with our daughters. Just come and play!

⏭️ Other Rebel Princess Certified Content

Whether your child’s evening wind-down time involves watching or reading, we have recommendations for you:

• 📺 Top 5 Show Recos: From Africa’s STEM Superhero, who ‘technovates’ epic inventions to a Royal Detective solving mysteries in an Indian-inspired kingdom.

• 📖 Top 5 Book Recos: From a board book series redefining what it means to be a princess to a chapter book series about a Japanese-American 8-year old navigating family traditions, friendships and personal growth

Dedicated to our Trailblazers in Tiaras,

The Team from Rebel Princess Community