How to make your kid want to play chess

Like all good uncles, I wish great things for my niece, who just turned three in January.
And like all chess players who learned the game after high school, I wish I could have learned the game when I was three.
I don’t think that’s possible, but in Peyton’s case, I’m willing to set up the pieces whenever she’s ready.
Already I’ve won some small victories in pursuing my devious and admittedly vicarious scheme. She knows the names of the pieces and can distinguish them all, and what’s more, she loves to play - asking almost every time she comes over if we can play “the chess.”
She first knew chess as the thing that her uncle does on the Internet after dinner.
I played it coy, though, keeping the mystery of the horsies and castles to myself, until one day she asked if she could play.
This was my cue to give her a chess set I’d bought for $3 at Target for just this occasion. We sat down to open it, and when I unfolded the cheap paper board, she picked out a knight and danced it around the squares, saying, “Neigh, neigh,” as the horse galloped willy-nilly.
I felt proud and hopeful, glad that phase one of my plan had worked itself so efficiently.
We were so close, I thought. We had everything we needed - the board, the pieces, she was sitting on her side, I was sitting on my side.
And then she threw the knight behind the couch.
We remain in phase two to this day. Her favorite activity involves piling my weighted pieces in the middle of their vinyl board and, with one swipe of her hand, sending the pieces in all directions. She calls it “crashing” the pieces.
But we make a little progress each time, because when we clean them up we look for and put away each piece in turn.
“OK, pass me a rook,” I’ll say, and she always finds the right one.
I’m not sure how long we’ll be playing “crashing” chess, but it has its own simple fun, and, for her, I have infinite patience.