Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Indoctrinating Children


I have two little kids.  I'm a bit torn about whether I want to encourage them to collect baseball cards like I do.  I mean, why would I?  Kids will pursue whatever interests they like and  my role is just to encourage them in whatever that is, rather than trying to steer it to what I like.

But I'm kind of psyched that my kids have taken an interest in collecting cards recently, particularly kid #1 (the elder).    Supermarkets here are now stocked with "Super Mario Bros. History Card Wafers", a snack produced by Bandai. Each of them comes with one card from a 22 card set, featuring the cover art from various Mario Bros. games from the 1980s to the present.  

I bought one for him a few weeks back just because he likes Mario and not really thinking about the card.  He ate the snack pretty quickly, and then I noticed that he was really excited about the card too.  He carried it around with him all day.  He brought it to the table with him at dinner.  He even brought it to bed with him when he went to sleep.  

Neat, my kid likes cards too.

So since then we've made a point of buying one every time we go to the super market.  I also sometimes stop on my way home to pick one up for him.  And I bought him a little album to put them in.  He's got about half the set.  He gives me his doubles.  Its fun.  It actually reminds me a lot of my own experience as a kid getting interested in baseball cards and my dad sometimes stopping on his way home from work to get some for me.  I now appreciate why he did that for me way more than I used to.

I'm also encouraged that he likes to play baseball with me.  Well, he likes to go to the park with a bat, glove and balls with me and mess around with them.  I'm really on the fence about encouraging him to join a team though.  In Japan, baseball is not played by kids for fun, its an extremely rigid and intense activity which (to me at least) seems to suck all the fun out of it.  If he decides that he wants to join a team, I'll be all in and support him all the way. But if not, I'm not going to pressure him. Anyway, if he ends up getting interested in baseball, he might get interested in baseball cards at some point.  If not, I'm sure he'll find something else cool to be interested in. 

Anyway, anybody else out there have kids who they are gently nudging towards an interest in baseball cards?

12 comments:

  1. Don't have kids, but I have students. I don't really nudge, but I have no problem giving them free cards in hopes that they might want to collect one day.

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    1. I would say giving free cards away is a pretty big nudge :) I wish I had a teacher like you when I was a student.

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  2. I’ve tried, but to no avail. He does have more interest in football and if his favorite team would ever do well he might start collecting more.

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    1. Ha, having your team do well certainly does act as a motivator.

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  3. My oldest paid some attention while I watched games - enough that she has some favorite MLB players - put never really collected cards. The younger one has no interest in either cards or baseball although she somehow became a hockey fan.

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    1. Funny how that works. I'm not holding my breath that either of mine will take any interest in baseball cards!

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  4. Great story! I hope you guys can complete the 22-card set. (And if you do, feel free to show them here on the blog!)

    My 6-year-old nephew has developed an interest in collecting cards without my nudging, thanks to some of his classmates who introduced him to Pokemon cards last year. Since then, I've given him a few stacks of junk wax-era baseball and hockey cards, just to see if he'd be into them. So far he's still just into Pokemon. And dinosaurs.

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    1. Thanks! He got the "Super Mario Bros 3" card the other day which was the one he wanted most. Its getting harder to find these things though, a lot of grocery stores are sold out so I'm not sure if we can complete the thing pack by pack!

      My son is also into Pokemon and dinosaurs!

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  5. My son is three, and likes to pretend that my graded cards are cookies. His interest in them as baseball cards is limited, but he does enjoy opening the mail with me, because he knows that if I get a package it's going to have a "b-card" in it. And he did pick up a toy bat once and tell me that he's Joe DiMaggio, which I thought was pretty good for a three year old!

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    1. You are a braver man than I to be giving graded cards to a three year old :)

      3 is an awesome age, maximum cute stuff. I got my son one of those foam bats when he was about 3 and it was very amusing to try to teach him how to use it, though mine has no idea who DiMaggio is!

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  6. I know that it's a little off topic, but I just wanted to say how great I think it is that you're NOT forcing your interests onto your children, especially since it seems like that's all parents do anymore, everything from politics to favorite sports teams, gets rammed down these poor kids throats by their parents -- which not surprisingly, usually ends up backfiring for the parents.

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    1. Thanks! My philosophy is that they'll like what they like and I should support what they like even if I don't like it (within reason of course)!

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