If you didn't know I have a couple of kids. 3 in fact. And as with any other emotional touchy feely stuff, they might not have drawn the best straw getting a father. But such is life.
Still I do my best to provide as any parent would do, but my quirks of course raise issues that I don't see that many other places. First off, I've realized along the line somewhere that good parenting wasn't so much about being liked, but rather guiding and leaving a decent product in the end: Grown decent human beings. Thus far I seem to succeed, be that to their mother saving them from my insanity or just the fact children er resilient I have no comments.
At any rate, I'm a nerd. And proud of it. It's that simple. It would seem that my Oldest daughter now almost 9 years, 8,5 something, 9 at the end of august, mkay... Being my firstborn and thusly being the prime subject of my strange views on existence when looking for guidance in the worlds have become a nerd too. Whether that's genetics of heritage you can debate for hours with no results, but the fact is that she's a nerd too.
She shows some funny trades, ohh keep in mind that my Dwarflike single minded stubbornness and skills for debating she have too. This results in facts like no is merely someone that hasn't yet seen the reasons and meaning of things and must thusly be shown the light. Most often used word in our household is "Why?". Authorities, well they are there, but maybe I'm smarter then they are. This trade is common I believe and course of much trouble in danish households these days, so nothing special there. Yet she doesn't have a ground moral compass as to what is basically right and wrong, and is mostly ruled by her logic. As foul language for instance is not something understood, so there's language... she uses the language and word used around her, and there's no filter to this. Again you try explaining why censoring is good without making exceptions...
Anyway, i started this text from an experience I had yesterday sitting on the couch feeding the smallest and focusing on that, while she and her little brother started debating something and I took a listen to the details. He's 5, going on 6, He'll be 6 by September... And he also shows the sign of not merely accepting the first explanation if it doesn't co-exists with his perception of the world. They are called Lucien, and Akita.
Anyway I noticed they were discussing relative sizes, how they got that started beats me, but Akita was starting to explain to Lucien how the sun was way bigger then both the earth and the moon, to the size that he could fit 1.000 earths into the sun. The debate come to think of it had to do with sun burns and summer temperatures. And the details aren't really important. what stoke my attention was the fact she was starting to describe and illustrate the Earth evolves around Sun, with moon revolving the Earth, and every one of them spinning.
You might have been exposed to this somehow, somewhere else with Oranges, strings, sticks, apples and spinning devises. From what I know this setup is presented children in the age 12'ish and that seems consistent with around 10 year olds being able to sense abstractly. But she's 8,5. Now if someone had set up a rig like it for her to watch I wouldn't have cared, she'd just memorized the rig. But she hasn't. I expect she's picked it up from a book I noticed her reading a few weeks ago. Still going from a text to actually understanding and conceptualize abstracts like that takes me a bit on a surprise. Guess I'll have to ramp up geometric shapes and structures soon...
But that's just one thing striking me. Another thing is: taking a step back and watching it from a 3rd. person perspective both of them are rather nerdish. The way to read, memorize and use facts either picked up watching Disney Channel, reading fact books, asking teachers or others. They pick up facts like this and sets them as universal truths. Don't get me wrong, they aren't savants or anything, in fact they are merely ordinary kids, it's just the way they pick up knowledge that's fascinating. They do it literally. And well not all their logic is sound, for instance: Santa doesn't actually live next door to grandma, nor do I actually put the sun at the sky every morning. Innocent beliefs that'll be replaced in time, yet it's the way they understand the world and its logic.
I can't say I'm all innocent in the effect though and frankly I need a bit of help this summer:
In the schools among the kids today there's hobby with Soccer cards, and they collect those from age 6, kinder garden classes and up with obsessive behaviours. This weekend Lucien was exposed to this and naturally the hype got hold of him, and as any drug dealer he was offered a couple of cards.
From his perspective, it's cards with soccer players on them, and he knows nothing or relatively little about soccer. The fact there's clubs like Barcelona FC or what ever else there s is obvious to him. This is something I'm sure given the chance someone will teach him, and the corruption starts now.
So I'm going to throw a counter to that:
The main objective in the collection is to get the kids to buy more card to get the full team, following the real life clubs team setups, with transfers shirt changes and so forth. This is a common market trick and the kids are easy targets once hooked. Now how to unhook....
He doesn't know much about football, which good, so that's not going to drive him. He loves Transformers, star wars and stuff like that.
The main point in the activity is to compare collections to have the most complete collection of cards.
Bringing him a card collection that no one else have would eliminate the competitive element of it all, and getting a relatively complete collection (1 season is a collection. Season 1-10 is a collection of collections) would make it a fix expense and should last a few years.
So been looking for it, but haven't found SW which is mercantile enough to threaten the exclusive component, to Transformers. Of course all the Bacucan, Beyblade, Pokemon etc are options, but still needing to retain the exclusive and completeness illusions to ward of the soccer corruption.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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