#larryc

My 13-year-old son and I are watching every Star Trek right now and it is a fantastic experience. In fact it has repaired out relationship. My son has been acting up in school and at home since he was 8 or 9. A nice kid but too smart for his own good, too easily frustrated, too easily distracted. And is it helpful that he loves attention and is great at making people laugh? No it is not. The last five years have been tough, with regular phone calls and notes home from various principals and school counselors, pleas from teachers to get the boy to settle down, hints of ADHD or Asperger's or whatever the diagnosis du jour. We put him in a private school we could not really afford in hopes a more challenging environment would straighten him out. He was expelled in the 6th grade for his constant low-grade disruptions of class and the complaints of other parents. Out of options, we turned to home schooling. That too was problematic with constant monitoring needed to keep him on track.  Last summer, when the boy was 12, he asked me to look at something on the computer. "I can tell they are making fun of someone--like when people imitate Arnold Schwarzenegger--but I don't know who it is." He showed me some Youtube video game walk through. The narrator was doing a lazy Shatner impression, biting off each word: “Now. You. Go. Through. This. Door...” “He is imitating William Shatner playing James T. Kirk. You know, the captain in Star Trek,” I told Sam. “Do you mean Star Wars?” Sam asked. I jumped up in alarm. “Son, go straight to the living room!” I commanded. “Fire up Netflix! Summer school is in session.” We fell in love with Star Trek. I had not watched the original series of Star Trek since I was not much older than Sam, and I had forgotten that the original series was as much about philosophy and the events of the 1960s as it was about science or adventure. Every episode was a conversation starter, and gave us a neutral ground to talk, from topics like race relations, the rights of individuals versus the good of the many, sexism, the environment. We also had our favorites--my son liked Spock and Sulu the best of all the characters, I preferred Kirk and McCoy. And as a boy entering his teenage years, my son was very interested in the mini skirted female crew members and Green Orion slave girls. We inhaled the series like so many bags of popcorn, some days watching four or five episodes in a row. “Just one more?” the boy would ask standing between me and the clock on the wall. Why not? One night on his way up to bed he said something I had not heard in years--”I love you Dad!” “I love you too,” I managed to get out before my voice broke. We decided to watch everything labeled Star Trek ever made. We moved on to Next Gen and then to Deep Space Nine. At some point I realized that I had committed to over 500 episodes of television and 11 movies, but I had made a promise, and beside we were having fun.  From the detente of Star Trek a general household peace blossomed. We got a lot less attitude and a lot more cooperation, and so we were perhaps more understanding and supportive, and positive energy just snowballed. My son became more patient and far slower to anger. The therapist noticed the change. "Star Trek!" we explained. A few months ago my son decided he wanted to go back to public school, and even entering midyear he is doing really well. His therapist suggested that we are about done with therapy.  So there you have it--Star Trek saved our family. We just finished DS9 and are moving into Voyager. By the end of summer we will be done. That is OK though, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and other series should carry us through his teenage years.