Gotta Catch Them All, I Guess!
In which I try to moderate my support of my daughter's new hobby and fail.
It’s always been important to me to not shove Geekdom down my daughter’s throat. Yes, I’ve always prayed that she NEVER be attracted to group sports, I don’t know if I could support that with the required outdoor sun exposure, but otherwise, I’ve always wanted her to grow into being her own person: Like the things she likes. Do the things she enjoys. Outside my own interests/obsessions.
But as she’s grown up, I realize that I don’t have to worry about her liking things just because I like them at all. Because my kid is literally my opposite. Rock-n-roll to my classical piano. X-Games to my prissy ice skating Olympics. She’s decisive, sure of her own needs, and never afraid to express them. Where I will bend over to please literally anyone, “You like the cello, checkout clerk at the Barnes and Noble? I’ll learn how to play it for you right now!” My kid responds…differently. “You want me to play with Calico Critters, mama? Fine. I’ll stick them under the bed to be ‘lonely’ because I hate them so much!” No! Not the Fuzzy Wuzzy Panda Family, YOU MONSTER!
That said, I’m gonna live my life and do things that interest me, and she’s gonna be around the house to see it (she has to be, legally) so a little bit of bleed over can’t be avoided. I can’t help it if I play video games after dinner every night, and my kid likes eating carrots and blueberries while I do it, screaming, “Ground Pound, mama!” at me which munching her veggies. That’s just encouraging healthy eating, right? And if she happens to see that a whole wall of my office is covered in board games and wants to get them down to look at them closer, it’s just natural that I’ll sit down and teach her all the rules instead of letting her scatter the pieces everywhere! (Which, unwittingly, has led to the fact that now she can now kick my butt at super complicated euro-style games like Five Tribes.) It’s not my fault! I told her she could learn to play correctly or go watch TV! She’s made her own choices!
Up until now though, all these geek interests she’s involved herself in have stemmed from her observing me. But finally, at aged seven, she’s discovered a nerdy passion all on her own:
Pokemon.
I THINK she started enjoying it about a year ago, when my brother Ryon visited. She saw him play Pokemon Go on his phone, and he’d let her toss balls and, more excitingly, evolve Pokemon, wasting all his candies. (The sacrifice was very teeth-gritting on his part, but sweet he let her grow up all those Pidgies!) I then gave her my long-dormant Go account, renaming my avatar quickly when she said, “Your trainer name isn’t ‘Felicia’ mama? What’s a LAEBIA?” Oops. “Uh, let me rename it after you, baby!”
Because of Pokemon Go, we started playing some of the other Pokemon games on Switch, which she enjoyed watching me play, but didn’t seem to engage in more deeply than just observing. That is, until we went to a kid’s birthday party late last year and she got a pack of Pokemon cards in the party goodie bag. The minute she popped opened that pack and got a “V-Max” card, which she didn’t have any value attached to until another kid saw and was like, “OMG that’s a V-Max can you trade it to me, please please!” she realized, “Dude, this is currency I’m in control of. And it has animals on it! This is my LIFE now.”
To be clear (and reveal that I’m old), Pokemon came out when I just started college. So it isn’t really a thing for me. I always thought Pikachu kinda looked like an arrogant yellow balloon rat, and generally didn’t know much else about any of it except Evie was the most adorable thing that I’d ever seen. When Pokemon Go came out about 10 years ago I played that a ton, but I definitely didn’t have any cards of my own. (Magic YES! Pokemon NO!) But you can imagine the 180 I pulled when my daughter started expressing interest. I mean, this subject was close enough to my own native domain to make me feel…POTENTIALLY POWERFUL.
At first, all she wanted was more cards. And boy, did I know how to hook her up! When I got to say, “Let’s go to the friendly local game store together!” secretly more thrilled than God. We sauntered in there and I announced, too loudly to the whole store, “My daughter is interested in Pokemon. Round up everything she needs, sirrah!”
Her enthusiasm for tearing packs open like a wolverine and discovering new Pokemon was so heartwarming. And for the first time, when I went to fan conventions, I felt like I had something valuable to contribute to her life instead of robbing her of time with me. “What stuffed Pokemon can I bribe you with this trip, sweetie?” Of course, she had to pick the most obscure animal to be her favorite, Clodsire, the evolution of Paldean Whooper, both of whom are the color of dung and not AT ALL popular in the plush toy market, so, it was challenging. See my video embedded below about this issue, in which I share how I despise the animal, and had to spend $150 to get a plush version of one shipped from Japan for Christmas. I made my daughter’s life with the toy, and made several million enemies with the video.
The problems started a few months ago, when I let my support go…OVERBOARD. Her school, a nice progressive California one with skateboarding lessons as part of the curriculum, started offering an after-school class for the game. Yes, my kid goes to Pokemon class. Don’t tell your own kids or you’ll never hear the end of it. This is when the competitive nature of the collecting “sport” started getting under my skin.
At first, I just wanted her to be an “A” Pokemon student, and according to my research, I needed to sort the cards she owned properly. So I got her binders. But then, because she only wanted to keep her favorites in the binder, I got a box to sort the excess Pokemon cards. And ordered color-coordinated separators to sort them type, like any non-savage would.
When, at her first class, she accidentally traded one of her favorite cards away and was devastated, I said, “Don’t take your special cards you don’t want to lose to school, baby. We’ll have two binders, one for showing off and one for trading.” Not really setting a good example there, but hey, some douche canoe seven-year-old somehow got their mitts on her precious Altaria AND DIDN’T DESERVE IT.
To set up the new binder system, I had to comb through about two hundred cards to get all the shinies out, because the kids at school had exacting standards and only wanted full art cards or shinies to trade. It was a lot of work. So afterward, I wanted credit. After her next class, I went up to the Pokemon teacher and said, “Hi! Did you notice my daughter’s trading binder was arranged really neatly by type today? And only has shiny’s and full art cards? Pretty cool, right?” The twenty-two year old teacher looked at me like, “Are you trying to get a grade for this yourself, old lady?!”
Yes. I was.
Basically, I started throwing myself way too much into “helping” my daughter with her collection. Whenever she’d get home from class and be sad because, “So-and-so has five V-Max cards and I only have one!” you better believe I was on the internet ordering a butt-load of V-Max cards before her heart could beat another second. In the last several weeks, I’ve gotten cards delivered to the house almost every day. FOR THE RECORD I didn’t buy her any super rare expensive ones, but as the small credit card charges started rolling in, I realized my ego was getting involved. I was kinda being taken over by the attitude, “You’re gonna have the best collection because mama has a reputation to maintain!!!” Turning into a hedge fund manager with an elite car collection to build. Or something else douchey.
I finally realized I’d really gone overboard when, last week, I sat her down to MAKE her learn the rules to play the game and Battle properly. There was something toxic inside me saying, “She’s gotta be the best Pokemon player in that class or ELSE!” It’s everything I’ve wanted to avoid as a parent with swimming or violin or whatever other skill parents like to force on their kids, to push her like that, but in this instance, I let myself go down the rabbit hold of possibly sucking all the fun out of the hobby in my need for her to be “the best”.
But, as I read page three of the strategy guide on deckbuilding out loud, I looked up and I noticed she wasn’t paying attention at all. She’d emptied all her binders out on the floor and was surrounded by all her cards. WTF KID?! You just made a huge mess and aren’t listening to my uninvited lecture on the proportion of trainer to Pokemon cards for deck building?! NO DINNER FOR YOU!!!
I snapped at her. “What are you doing?!” She said from the floor, with the sweetest voice, “I have a big idea, mama! I want to re-arrange all my collection by friendly level instead of type!”
I was confused. “Friendly level?! That’s not in the manual…” But as I watched her, I had a huge realization: “Most of this Pokemon stuff I’ve done hasn’t been for her at all. It’s been for me.”
On the spot, I decided to stop with the Tiger Poke Mom act. And I’ve been good at stepping it back since! I mean, if she asks me to get her a card in the future, I’ll get it for her if it’s cheap. And this week I set up a chore chart that, if she completes, she gets three Pokemon packs as allowance. But this is HER thing. I want it to be a source of joy for her, not pressure. (I’ll still sort her binders by type for her of coures, because, like I said, I’m not gonna raise a SAVAGE.)
And yes, I did get on the floor and help her sort her cards by “friendliness,” which was totally an arbitrary criteria she made up that I didn’t really understand, but looked pretty when put in the binder. And we both agreed as we sorted that Mochoke is a creep. So we stuck him under the bed with the Calico Critters.
Interesting Links:
The sequel to Hannah Kaner’s “Godkiller”, “Sunbringer” just released and is just as good as the first. Great fantasy series.
“Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest” is a fantastic co-listening podcast series my daughter and I love to enjoy together. Very fun interpretations of Grimm Fairy Tales.
I’ve always been obsessed with inventory management in games, and Backpack Battles has really nailed an awesome way to gamify it. (Only on PC now, sigh!)
As a fanny pack lover, this Baggu one I just picked up is the BEST. Holds a ton, I wear it like a bandolier. Cool mom? Yes I am.
Personal Links (Also Interesting):
My Audible original “Third Eye” won the best audio drama of the year at the Audie Awards last month! Thank you for all your support and positive feedback!! <3
My 2024 convention schedule is totally updated on felicia.day, check it out and come say hello! I’ll see ya’ll next in May in Philly and Detroit. :)
I narrate Ernest Cline’s new YA novel “Bridge to Bat City”! It’s a wonderful love letter to Austin, TX. As a UT grad, loved working on it :)
See you next month, and on my Discord channel in between for chatting and friendship! <3
oxxo
Felicia
Nice post. It was great the way you recognized that you were going down a road that you didn't want to as a parent and stepped it back. Not everyone can do that.
This was a fantastic read. I had to read the whole thing out loud when my hubby was looking at me laughing. Thanks for sharing your adventures while parenting.