In honor of Star Trek Week on The Nerds of Color, the School of Hard NOCs presents a little primer on how to turn your toddler into a Trekkie.

Step One: Make sure that your child’s first stuffed toy is a Spock Bear or a Tribble. A soft Enterprise makes a perfect special occasion gift. Supplement liberally with plush crewmembers. Also, sing the theme song to Enterprise as a lullaby (with the first season version in your head, not the one from later seasons when they made it more poppy and de-emphasized the strings), even though you know you’ll get crap about liking it from other fans.

Step Two: Dress your child in the right uniform. Is your baby fearless? Try yellow. Dress your little thinker in blue. A bit, say, accident-prone? Go with red.

Step Three: Teach your child age-appropriate concepts and reinforce character recognition with the beautifully illustrated board book Star Trek Book of Opposites.

Step Four: Once your child can identify characters and ships by name on sight, you’re ready for the main event. Start with “The Trouble With Tribbles” or the Animated Series, then use this in-depth kid-friendly episode guide from our friends at GeekMom or this top-10 list from Nerdy With Children to help you introduce your little ones to the Star Trek televisual universe.

Step Five: Reinforce your child’s Trekkie-ness by seeding her toy collection with Kre-O Abramsverse building sets and custom uniforms for her American Girl dolls and serving her Starfleet-approved snacks.

Step Six: Bask comfortably in the knowledge that your child will always know the difference between Star Trek and that other franchise starts with “Star,” and that she will recognize and proudly point out to you Star Trek homages in children’s programming.———————————-

School of Hard NOCs is a regular weekly feature at The Nerds of Color that will review past and ongoing comic books, sci-fi/fantasy books, TV, and other forms of nerdy media specifically for parents raising the next generation of nerds of color.