Encouraging My Son’s Natural Geeky Aspirations
Number of Views :852NOTE: This post originally appeared on DnDnDads.com, where I’ve also begun blogging.
My son is destined to be a geek. At the age of nearly-3, he’s the height of a four year old, and has an overactive imagination.
The first day we got him Buzz Lightyear pajamas, he attempted to leap off the couch shouting, “And beyond,” pressing the red button on the chest. He knows nearly all of the main Marvel superheroes names, and will often imitate their powers, from Iron Man’s energy blasts to Spider-Man’s web slinging (he’s also known, when he gets mad, to shout “HULK SMASH!”). He begs me to get out a couple of toy lightsabers I have, and he enjoys running around fighting with those. He has a suit of armor he puts on, donning a helmet and picking up a battleaxe.
He is constantly sure there are monsters around the house, but rather than run from them, he’ll seek them out.
He has his own dice bag, full of d20′s and d12′s.
He’s an absolute geek, and he’s my little geek. I hope to encourage that geekiness in the future.
Yet I don’t want to force him into it. I know that a lot of kids rebel against what their parents think is “cool”, and don’t want him go the opposite way, disliking it in the future. I’d rather let him figure it out on his own, with some gentle nudging from me.
Hopefully, within a year or so, I can get him playing rpgKids, or at least understand the concept of taking turns (something we’re working on now with Candyland). He already is able to easily recognize the numbers 1-20, so that’s a start!
Fingers crossed, he’ll be rolling dice with me within the next 5 years or so.
My oldest kid had a similar progression to yours.
One day during a family holiday gathering, his cousin ran into the room of adults crying saying that my son hit him.
When asked why he hit, my son replied “I didn’t”. Baffled, we asked, “What happened then?”. His reply? “I Hulk smashed him in the face.”, said in a serious tone of “Well, obviously that isn’t hitting.”
That asside, we played our first D&D game when he was six years old. Since then, we’ve done one-on-one sessions, a few group D&D sessions with my main group, a few sessions with his friends, and a couple of D&D encounters.
He’s turning nine now, and this summer we’re going to try to get an ongoing campaign with his friends.
When he’s able to ask to play, he’s ready.
My daughter is 20 months old and picked up my After the Bomb RPG book from my book box. She rushed over, sat in my lap and started flipping through it, pointing and exclaiming “What DAT?” at each mutant animal and giant robot.
It now appears to be her favorite book – she grabs it whenever it’s out and brings it to me. So, that’s awesome. It’s definitely more fun to read than “Goodnight Moon” for the 800th time.
That’s awesome!