Adventures in SF Parenting: Retro Playtime
Technology is awesome, just sayin’. As I explained in my post “Video Games are Edumacational,” I fundamentally believe that video games can be a wonderful educational tool for children. Beyond that, merely interacting with technology actually gives children a leg-up in our tech heavy environment. With schools utilizing iPads, Smart Screens, and computers on a regular basis, those children who have interacted with technology at home on a regular basis have a distinct advantage over those who have not. Having said all this, there is something equally crucial about putting down the tablet and picking up a game of Pick-Up Sticks.
Adventures in SF Parenting: Halloween is Cosplay for Muggles
One of the most difficult times of year for geek parents like myself is the month or so leading up to Halloween. Not because Halloween isn’t the most awesome holiday in the United States, but because geek costumes aren’t the type that you can buy off the rack at Target. No, that would be too EASY and it certainly would make cosplay a hell of a lot less esoteric. I don’t know the history of cosplay at all, but I do know it’s been around longer than most people think (the term wasn’t coined until the mid 80’s, but people have been dressing up as favorite characters since at least the Victorian age). It has gained more and more prominence in the last decade or so as people have glommed onto nerd-dom as a valid form of popular culture. The SyFy channel’s Heroes of Cosplay is the most recent example of cosplay going a bit mainstream, which is pretty damn awesome. It means that kids who love to emulate their favorite characters in all forms of media now have people to look up to and, perhaps, learn from. Sadly, it also means that my children are extra demanding about their costumes this year. For the past 3 Halloweens, I have had to bite the bullet and construct my kids’ costumes for them. Because, as I previously mentioned, geeky characters just are not readily available in your standard big chain retail stores or Halloween pop-ups. They are occasionally available online, but as they’re handmade by other nerds, they’re not exactly affordable. And if a costume IS available on the mass market, it’s basically just crap. I mean, really crap. Five years ago, #2 wanted to be Leia for Halloween and #1 wanted to be Ahsoka (damn Clone Wars). I bought both off of some online costume retailer or another, they both fell apart in my hands and didn’t fit anyway. To my kids’ major disappointment, they were both stuck wearing random old pieces that we had lying around the house. They had their hearts SET on those characters, but I had no faith in my ability to make something better. Another random Halloween went by before the fit hit the shan. October 1st rolled around and they, determined as can be, requested Finn and Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time. Both of these costumes are now readily available (beware of crap), but at the time the only people dressing up as any character from Adventure Time were cosplayers. Thank goodness for that, as cosplayers have established some fantastic communities that revel in revealing their processes and collaborative support. I was able to find patterns for Finn’s hat and Princess Bubblegum’s crown. Though most of it was up to my genuinely craptastic sewing skills. Still… I managed to help my kids be who they wanted to be for Halloween! And then the next year they wanted to be Hogwart’s characters. And then LAST year? Nyan-Cat and Link. Seriously, who the hell dresses up as Nyan-Cat?? I didn’t even know who Nyan-Cat WAS, much less how to go about making a costume. But here’s the really fun part about having kids that don’t want to be the usual suspects for Halloween — I get to help them create something. Though I will admit to a majority of the sewing work, my kids collaborated with me in the development and execution of all aspects of their costumes. This is a vital piece of what it means, to me, to be an SF parent — DIY. I have found that the SFF community is as much about the creation of works as it is about the consumption of them. We are not passive receptors of all things “Geek,” but the creators and participants in those things. We establish entire communities dedicated to just TALKING about geeky things. So when my kid comes home and says, “Mom, I want to be Yukio for Halloween,” I don’t just stand there wondering who the frak Yukio is (though that is part of it), I also see it as an invitation to find out what my children love and why they love it. (By the way, my children often dress in pairs… the other one wanted to be Rin. Seriously, JFGI). Then I get to do what cosplayers do — create those random costumes using bits and pieces of material and ingenuity. It’s crucial to me that my kids are involved in this process as it teaches them the value of hard work AND imagination. So what ARE the kids going to be this year? Yuno Gasai and Doctor Stein (not pairs). Which means I’ve got a whole lot of anime to catch up on again.
Adventures in SF Parenting: Video Games are Edumacational
It might be controversial of me to say this, but video games taught my children how to read. Yah, you heard me, VIDEO GAMES TEACH CHILDREN! You know that old saying that goes, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Well that is doubly true of media usage by children. Video games can, indeed, teach children things. I’ll even go so far as to say that video games CAN teach children that violence is acceptable, but ONLY if the parents are reinforcing that belief by either normalizing the violence in the child’s every day life OR by not parenting at all. Which brings me back to video games teaching my children how to read. When our daughters were 4 and 2 1/2, respectively, we purchased the V-Tech V-Smile for Christmas. We wanted to give them an alternative to our PS2 and Nintendo Systems. Something that would allow them to participate in the same activities that my husband and I enjoyed, but didn’t require us to hold their hand while they were enjoying it. The V-Smile was specifically marketed as an educational console system, with a controller that was built for little hands and games that were both appealing and, well, educational. Our girls loved it, but they were desperate to play with mommy and daddy. Unfortunately for them, we had an appallingly low patience level and so if they turned on one of our games and landed on a screen with a text narrative, we’d say, “YOU CAN’T PLAY THAT UNTIL YOU CAN READ IT!” Poor neglected tots. (Granted, they also got to play City of Heroes with their Grandpa, who lived 3 states away… so that was cool.)
Adventures in SF Parenting: From Stern to STEM
One big benefit of opening a toy store is that when my kids arrive there after school, we are all stuck in the same space together and for the first time in YEARS, I get to help them with their homework! “Years?! What a horrible mother! You should have been supervising them THIS WHOLE TIME!” Yah, yah. Bite me. My kids have been better at their schoolwork than I am since 3rd grade. I gave up a while ago. However, they just started Algebra when they hit 7th grade, so we all get to puzzle it out together. This is both nice and frakking awful. Though I have internalized the mantra, “All are capable of math. There is no such thing as a ‘a math person,’ there are only those who give it a chance and those who do not,” I still struggle with some of the simpler concepts. However, now that I’m older, I do find that I can *enjoy* the struggle. Somehow, probably completely by accident, both of my daughters also seem to enjoy math and both recognize that it can be useful in their chosen “hobbies”. MoMo (#1) is an artist. She works on paper, but is already better at digital production and reproduction of artwork than I will ever be. I have the benefit of a (slim) digital media background and have been able to give her the tools and basic education she needs to learn how to create digital masterpieces. It is a joy to watch her grow in her love of the medium. Whether she was inspired by comic books, video games, cartoons, or what, I have no idea. However, she obsessively watches YouTube videos of people drawing random things (seriously, HOURS) and is exploring the realms of Manga and Anime. Granted, we raised her up right by forcing her to watch Studio Ghibli films on an endless loop – Clockwork Orange style. Messy Jessy #2 is a scientist/engineer/punky brewster. Her favorite toys from about age 3+ were Magnetix. Basically, if it let her build something, she could spend hours building random shit. From simple octagons, to massive buildings with parapets and flying buttresses. Her passion is construction, so every time we found a science kit that allowed her to explore this avenue, we did so. The cavern under her bed is a treasure trove of robotics. She is the proud owner of a soldering gun and a java programming manual (seriously, would someone *please* write a java programming instructional book for kids? I’m disturbed by the lack of them). Anyway, this past summer we were lucky enough to be able to encourage our daughters passions even further. Parents should be the first line of inspiration into math and science careers, with public schools following closely on their heels. However, it is exceedingly important that the surrounding community also offer programs that support these career paths. This not only benefits a child’s education, but it also benefits the county and city coffers. Tech businesses don’t stay in California’s Silicon Valley due to the cheap rent, they stay due to the sustainable brain capital. It’s practically splitting at the seams with generation after generation of IT workers – the 60+ year olds who founded the industries, the 40+s who turned them into powerhouses, the 20+s who spawned a new generation of web-based technologies, and the 5+s who are sitting at home on their parents I-pads, exploring technology in ways that my generation only saw in Science Fiction TV. The communities that want to capitalize on the new creative economy of the US are the ones that will institute programs that create these budding technologists. My daughters were participating in one such program. It was a partnership between a local youth based educational initiative and a Community College in the town where my parents live. For the cost of a Youth Recreational Summer Camp, they attended what were, essentially, college classes for a week. The one week program included more classes than I can even remember and gave children the freedom to explore numerous future careers and hobbies. MoMo took a class on digital art, which included instruction in Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. She learned how to interact with a drawing tablet, manipulate existing images, and create original artwork. Though the teacher left something to be desired in the personality department, the class gave her the information she needed to take her art to the next level. She now wants to figure out how to animate her work and I suspect she’ll begin designing Flash games sooner rather than later. Messy Jessy spent a week learning about different types of Engineering. With WOMEN! This was such a crucial experience for her, as it is for most young girls. Women still only account for a minimum proportion of STEM jobs, though the number of women receiving degrees in STEM fields has increased. It is difficult to say what societal pressure causes girls to not pursue math and science, but the pressure is there and so a great effort must be made to overcome it. Jess’s “Women in Engineering” course introduced the all-female class to a new field of Engineering every day of the week, hosted by a woman in each specific subset. They did projects in fields that ranged from Bio-Medical Engineering to Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Aeronautic. They touched a human heart while exploring artificial heart valves and MacGuyvered a set of Earphones. Basically, it was just frakking amazing. Will either of my daughters choose a career that is related to the respective courses they took this summer? I have no idea. Nor do I care. As a parent, I must encourage them to follow their passions, but when they are no longer passions, I must allow them to choose another. Honestly, if there is only one thing that I learned from Science Fiction and Fantasy, it’s that choosing your own path in life is the key to happiness. However, for now, I’ll keep
Adventures in SF Parenting: Kids and their YouTubez
Recently, I realized that I am no longer relevant. This was not something that I thought would happen to me at the tender age of 35, but I don’t really get a say in the matter. It is also possible that I wouldn’t have realized this for another decade had I not had children at a very young age. Or perhaps if I were less liberal with my computer usage policies in our home. Regardless, the epiphany occurred, and it was mind blowing. A little background data for those of you who haven’t listened to The Skiffy and Fanty Show podcast – I am the occasionally proud, more commonly flabbergasted, parent of two girls. My daughters are 11 and 12 years of age, and they are both in 7th grade at a local public Junior High School. You’ll learn more about that at some point in these “Adventures in SF Parenting” posts. Suffice it to say, if you bothered to do the math, I had my kids when I was fairly young. I was 22 when my older daughter, Mo, was born, my husband was only 18. That probably gave us an entirely different viewpoint on parenting than
The Alphas (Episode 2) of Warehouse 13 (Episode 3.2) in Eureka (Episode 412)
Thank you, SyFy, for making Mondays something to look forward to! My husband has completely stopped watching Warehouse 13 and hasn’t started watching Alphas, but it’s still a joy to share Eureka with him.. and we got to squee geekily together, which is always a great thing. However, this week’s episodes of all three were a bit on the serious side (though the Eureka version of serious is never actually THAT serious). Spoilers Ahead!
