What’s it like having geek kids? Well, my son just said he was going to go watch the sunset. It’s 3:29 in the afternoon and we live in a southern state, and despite the time of year the sunset is at least an hour and a half off. Curious about his plans I asked him how.
“In Minecraft,” he said.
Of course, I thought, that makes sense.
We have two very active, but very different boys. For example, we recently celebrated a birthday here and after the party one sat by himself and wrote several pages of comics while the other invited someone over to spend the night and continued to socialize throughout the evening. In fact socialized well past bedtime… our bedtime… he’s 4… but that’s another story.
How do you get them to experience the real world without losing the sense of wonder and magic?
We spend a lot of time saying things like, “People are more important than (things, games, etc.)” and occasionally borrowing from Pratchett and saying, “Personal is not the same as important.” That last one is a difficult concept to explain to younger kids, or adults for that matter. But when it comes to balancing self-care and care for others, the environment, or even your cat (Samwise Gamgee – naturally) where do you draw the line between personal and important? 
We often turn to books, and a couple spring to mind that help in this regard:
Geek Dad – Ken Denmead
Outdoor Parents Outdoor Kids – Eugene Buchanan
While great advice and a decent read, you can’t base your life off of someone else’s plan, that just doesn’t work, dear reader. So while we look to these books for ideas, we also look to our friends to see what works for them, and then we see how these ideas square with our values, ideals, and past experience.
Here are a list of things I think of as geek ideals, and things both MOMVENTURE and I try to pass on.
Be busy: If you’re like me, the phrase, “I’m bored.” is one of the most annoying things you can hear as a parent. In a world of wonder and excitement how can you be bored? That’s easy to say as a parent, but I can remember a fair amount of boredom as a child, so I know there must be some key learning to pass on here. Boredom, at least with my kids, involves both not being able/allowed to do the thing they want to do (usually video games) combined with a high activation energy (I’m married to a chemist) for other hands-on activities. Helping them get the energy is key. I find sitting down and engaging in the new activity helps get them over that hump. Once they’re involved you can safely step away.
Be interested: This is a two way street, if you want your kids to be interested in something, you have to be both interested in things, and interested in their interest. It’s a convoluted sentence, I know, but true. You have to demonstrate both the capacity to be interested and the ability to find their interests cool.
Be inquisitive: When our oldest started school we tried to help his inquisitive nature by asking each day, “So, what questions did you ask today?” Admittedly we’ve since slipped in our responsibilities in this regard, however the seed we planted helped foster his natural inquisitiveness. Books can help here too, 2 of our favorites are The New How Things Work, which shows x-ray style views of all sorts of cool things and Things Explainer or What If?, by Randall Munroe of XKCD fame.
Be makers: This can be a challenge if you happen to be on the road. Of course, we are generally on the road in an ’89 Vanagon, which requires a maker-centric ethos. When we’re home though there are lots of things you can make, even with young kids, that are fun. We’ve tried bird houses (they make great gifts), robots, little libraries, video games (hey, making can happen virtually, check out Scratch), and many other things. Remember dinner also needs to be made, and cooking is a valuable and interesting skill. Basically, if you’re doing a craft or a project your kids can help. Yes, sometimes that help comes with sarcastic quotation marks around it, but that’s fine.
Be creative: Make art, it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be.
Be gamers: Portal 2‘s co-op mode is a thing of beauty. But this doesn’t necessarily mean you get to camp out on the XBOX all day. There are great board and card games any 7 year old can play. We love Forbidden Island, 7 Wonders, and Stratego. Your mileage may vary, but it’s good to note that safe competition or cooperation (Pandemic!) with your family can be fun.
Be readers: We’ve found that nothing develops that imaginative inner life more than a book. Younger kids, ones that can read by may not be quite into regular books can really get into graphic novels. Ben Hatke’s Zita the Spacegirl was an awesome hit at our house.
One of the biggest challenges for raising geeky kids here in 2016 is how you deal with technology, but that’s a topic unto itself, and something we’ll be covering in the weeks ahead. So stay tuned.