Comic-Con 2015 Panel on Fandom: The Next Generation

I was thrilled to be invited by Betsy Bozdech of Common Sense Media to appear on a panel discussion if and how to share our nerdy passions with our children. I was even more thrilled when I found out who would be on the panel with me: Jeffrey Brown, author of Darth Vader and Son, Jim McQuarrie of GeekDad, and none other than Clark Gregg, Agent Coulson himself!

We all dream of sharing our passions with our children. But it is important to be careful about it. Everyone on the panel had a story about sharing the wrong movie — or the right movie too soon — with a child who got upset, and feeling that we had “flunked parenting.” Young children will say what they think you want to hear and if it seems too important to you, they will tell you they like something when they really do not. Older children will say the opposite of what they think you want to hear; they will tell you they don’t like something when they really do. What matters is to let them develop their own nerdy attachments, the ones that they use to connect with their peers. Let them see you be passionate about something. If you want them to read, don’t tell them to read; let them see you read. If you want them to put down their devices, don’t tell them to put down their devices; put down your devices.

The best moment of the panel was when I mentioned Pokemon as a nerdy obsession kids love and adults generally do not, and McQuarrie said that his son had been a huge Pokemon fan, pointing to his now-adult son sitting in the audience. The entire room smiled at him and then, all at once, noticed that the young woman he had his arm around was dressed as…Pokemon!