The following excellent quote is from Canada's The Globe and Mail article "J.J. Abrams’s Super 8 bears the mark of Spielberg."

In Super 8, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney, making an impressive debut) has lost his mother to an accident at work, and his father isn’t on Joe’s wavelength. He wants to send the boy to baseball camp. “It’d be good for you to spend time with kids who don’t run around with cameras and monster makeup.” In the Abrams-Spielberg universe, this is a sign that Dad is being unreasonable.