I have these friends... "geek family pride" is their thing. if it's not normal, it's good. if it's couter to the way that conservative parents in the suburbs in an 80s movie would react, then it must be the only right way of doing things.
thus, the extreme in one direction gets met head-on by the extreme in the other direction. and no real progress is made.
it's a kind of approach to the world that i have a hard time endorsing -- the love of something for no other reason that its division, rather than a love for the thing itself. it's a mindset common in the punk scene, in the goth/industrial communities, in a ton of other outsider groups i've been involved in or at the frieng of, or even just dated someone from. it's removing the quality or significance of personal judgment from the equation, allowing something's acceptance or lack therof to be the sole measure of value.
should you let your son wear a purple tutu? sure, he's a kid. but he should know that it has a time and place, and perhaps those might not be when involved with peers after a certain age -- not to encouraging closeting a behavior, but instead understanding that sometimes the judgments of others affect us, and that has to factor into our decision-making. but... should you actively push your son to be different by encouraging him to break gender norms, by promoting the "boys should wear tutus" idea as a sort of agenda? how are you any better than those closed-minded people you are pushing against, the ones who bashed target for removing "girl toys" and "boy toys" distinctions from their stores?
now, though, i have a son.
what do i do?
he's young. he's not even one. but he has so many words already, and i had the opportunity to see his language development firsthand all summer -- from a few words here and there to full sentences and an expanding vocabulary. he is already showing signs of being how active i was, and how physical. he may end up an athlete, or fully involved in mainstream ideas. but he's also showing far more words than he should know at the time, so he may end up an intellectual. it's way too early to tell -- and it often evens out at about three.
i bought a box of Grey Knights soon after his birth that i have still not fully put together. that in itself is not a surprise (project hell is my workroom's natural state), but i'm also looking at expanding them as a "good guy" army if he wants to play with me later.
i want to encourage him to be who he is going to be, to support his interests even if they are not mine. i want to make sure he has a sense of security and safety, but also the bravery and confidence to explore. i want to see if he is interested in the things i love, but not in such a way that dictates his interests toward mine. and while i'd be sad if he never wanted to be involved in all the things i enjoyed in my own misspent youth, i'm more concerned with his happiness than my convenience.
where do you draw the line?
some games, such as 40k, involve kinds of thinking that develop gradually. painting uses fine motor control that does not happen immediately. other games involve imagination, but also following what could be seen as complicated rules. i have already seen the issues of books or toys that are just a bit too complicated being offered up too early, and i don't want to discourage or frustrate him by bringing it up before he is ready.
some games back in the day also had parents all aflutter due to various Moral Panics and action groups. new activities (particularly intellectual ones) are hard for some to understand, so even if Pat Pulling, the "steam tunnel incident," and a number of bad movies had not been made, i wonder if the biases of his parent's friends will affect him.
but it's a new era. it's not the same as it was growing up in the 80s. it isn't the same as the "cool to not do things" 90s. it's a post-jackson-lotr post-WoW world, and the same judgment that i received as a kid will probably not be in effect for todd.
how do geek parents try to even out and do right by their kids on multiple levels? how do we juggle social norms, expectations of proper behavior, our own enjoyments, and the overall goal of making sure they become functional and happy adults?
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