I have a 25-year old daughter who’s a quasi-geek. I think it’s a great alternative for kids who don’t do mainstream things like partying and sports. After enduring her fair share of bullying as a kid, in high school she started to find her own, safe place among geeks. While she marches to a different beat than us, she’s a lovely, affectionate, well-balanced young adult.
2 years ago, she married her high school sweetheart, a fellow geek who still occasionally plays D&D with his friends. However, they both hold decent jobs plus they are pursuing master’s degrees. (My daughter has one week left before getting her masters, as a matter of fact.) They are also accomplished chefs and often throw dinner and/or gaming parties for friends and co-workers.
So as odd as it is for to have a child playing competitive Quidditch, as long as they are good people, enjoy friendships, are in happy and healthy marriages, and are able to support themselves financially, who am I to interfere or judge? What more can I want for my kids?
Nothing to necessarily be concerned over yet (he’s only 10, he’s still figuring himself out), but beware the tribalism thing. You say that he hikes and bikes with the best of them but hasn’t had success with organized sports. This suggests to me that he has an idea that nerds shouldn’t/can’t be athletes or identify with athletic things.
I agree those are all fallacies, but a problem I’ve always had with it is that there is no real description of what to do about these, both in yourself or when you encounter them in others. Merely knowing about them is supposed to be enough.
As someone who played professional Quidditch in college, let me tell you that the base of the sport it nerdy, but the people who play it sure as hell aren’t.
He better be in shape and hit the weight room cuz you get your ass kicked if you’re not careful or willing to dish it out
He sounds as if he is someone who could become fairly narrow-minded - that to me seems to be the real disadvantage in the situation. One of my greatest regrets in life is that I learned way too late in life how to respect people who are different from me.
Nerd is cool these days. Celtling was queen of the third grade for couple of months when they found out she’d gotten a Minecraft coding class for her birthday.
Just do what you can to help him be king of the geeks. And use his interests to push him in useful directions (like learning to code through a game he enjoys .
Exercise is important, but it can be hiking to a geocache, or ultimate frisbee (I think they call it “Quidditch” these days) or even Morris Dancing. Heck, encourage pokemon “Go” if you have to, just don’t let him become a potato with prison pallor.
You got a good kid there, Mesquite. Of course you’ll have his back, but don’t let him catch you at it.
I used to be really nervous around kids, afraid that I was going to mess things up for them. But I’ve come to see that kids are their own people, even at a surprisingly young age. They have their own personalities and likes and needs, and they know immediately what they want.
You kid knows who he is (at least for now) and has the courage to be himself. You’re doing good, here, Mesquite.
Yeah, I remember when I thought that LARP was even more socially isolating than D&D as a kid - like LARPers were the people below my social group.
Then I actually met larpers. Buncha hot-ass vikings with clearly superior social skills whose description of LARP conventions (apparently the adult ones here in Germany involve a fairly substantial amount of sex and soft drugs) makes me want to strap on some chainmail. There are few things you can do that will be better for a young nerd than helping them get into LARP, particularly in large groups with tribe structures and whatnot.
Also, always check price guides. The kind of cards that may look good to a beginner who’s just starting out and the kind of cards that are worth hundreds of dollars often don’t overlap. The former is a beefy monster; the latter is a boring old land (which every single deck that uses blue and green mana should run four copies of and which they stopped reprinting decades ago and promised never to reprint again, making it incredibly valuable).
This is the kind of stupid trade I made when I started out.
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