Anonymous wrote:Yes. My parents didn't and I later wish they had. But it is a delicate balance finding time to have your kid pursue their own things while still having general cultural exposure, isn't it?

Whereas my parents also never encouraged me to fake interests so I wouldn’t be a weirdo at school and I’m eternally grateful for how they raised me. It’s nice to have easy confidence in my interests and not feel like I ought to pursue things I find dull because of social norms. So no, I don’t encourage my kids to do culturally normative things just for the sake of it. If they come home wanting to learn about things their friends like I’m fine with that or if I’m watching the Olympics or something then they’ll be exposed. But I’m not going to tell them what they should be expected to like based on demographic markers.

I support the "exposure" part of your post, OP, but not the "so they can fit into tween boy culture" part.

My DS is not interested in sports, but if the football game is on TV at my parents' house, I will explain the rules and what's going on. Usually he's interested in that much, and then gets bored as the game goes on and wanders away. That's good enough for me. That's exposure to new things, which I think is good no matter the topic.

But doing it so that you DS can someday fit in with other kids is pure middle-age projection. Water cooler talk? In middle school? Let me rephrase your post - You want your kid to talk about things he's not interested in so he can fit in with other kids he probably doesn't even like just so his mom doesn't think he's a weirdo.

Good god, OP. Focus on your own anxiety and stop socially engineering your kid's life. Middle school sucks enough without your mom trying to make you popular with the other boys.

Nope. I might say "Hey the Super Bowl is on this weekend - you probably want to find out who won before you go to school monday." But I would never encourage them to watch. I would encourage my daughters to walk lightly/gently but wouldn't push them to do ballet.

I think cultural literacy is important in general. It's a good skill to be able to carry on a basic conversation about a variety of things.

OP, don't impose your weirdness on your children. If you chose to be some bobble head whose sole talent is spouting pop culture trivia, that is you, not them. Go on Jeopardy maybe. You're giving vibes of not fitting in no matter how hard you try at watercooler talk.

Anonymous wrote:DS is in 5th grade, which is middle school here. We aren't huge sports watchers or followers at home, but he does play some sports. When I realized that his baseball coach asked him is favorite player and he couldn't answer I knew we needed a bootcamp. So over the summer we covered the basics, watched SportsCenter, got familiar with the local teams, etc. I truly think it helped him to be comfortable going into middle school and be able to be a part of the lunch conversations. One thing that threw me off was the amount of soccer talk, so I had him research that on his own.

This is precisely why any sort of bootcamp to brush up on professional sports or pop culture is pointless. Kids have a variety of interests--at least they do at the schools my kids attend. My 5th grader happens to love soccer but he has friends who love a variety of sports. My kid can probably name only one MLB team and one NFL team. No one cares. They don't have to "research" anything to be able to join a conversation--and participating in a conversation on an unfamiliar topic is a skill of its own.