I know Alex's obsession with guns stems from his obsession of good guys versus bad guys. Developmentally, it is appropriate as he figures out what is "good" and what is "bad."
Way back when I was pregnant and on bed rest, I had hella time to sit around and ponder parenting. I read THIS ARTICLE from Mothering on playing with weapons, tore it out, and kept it for future reference. To me, banning weapons for our kids makes no sense as things that are forbidden only become more exciting. I love this article because it explains ways to incorporate weapon play in a safe and educational environment.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Anyone else have a gun-obsessed kid? Anyone else read anything good on this topic? What do you think of the article - too crunchy or good food for thought?
14 comments:
I don't think the article is crunchy at all! I love the lead-in anecdote about shooting someone with the state of Maine at a Montessori school.
Nina is really into superheroes right now (her favorites being Frozone, Wordgirl (!!) and Baby Jack Jack) so she may not see a lot of guns, but there are plenty of other weapons being used. She has a pretty wild imagination, so a lot of role playing goes on in our house.
I don't think we have any sort of toy weapons in the house, but we have about half a dozen water bottles strategically placed around the house for when we need to remind one of our four cats to get off the counter/table/anything more than 3 feet above ground level. Lately, there have been a lot of water fights. (I think it coincides with the fact that when we were on vacation we watched Public Enemies when we thought Nina was asleep. Oops.)
Access was denied to the article, but how could I not weigh in?
We have guns in the house. Bryan collects them and enjoys shooting them. He has a "Good Guy Card" (concealed carry license). I am comfortable shooting several of our pistols.
All of our guns are in safes. The boys are not allowed to touch the safe without Daddy. He lets them look if they ask so it's not some big mystery.
We are using the NRA "Eddie Eagle" DVDs to reinforce gun safety: Stop. Don't Touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.
We don't have toy guns because we have real ones. That's the rule. Any toy guns/water guns/etc. must not look real in the least.
All that being said, JTC is not really into gun play quite yet. I think we're close though.
Parker is OBSESSED with all things weapon. I'm having a really hard time with it, not because of the guns and swords but because it's the first thing he's really actually been in to. He had a stint with trains but it quickly fizzled and other than that there's nothing he really loves. Then about six months ago we received hand me down swords (they were part of a pirate dress up costume) and Parker was hooked. I felt the same way about forbidding them- he would only want them more so I kept them. Now it has become an all out obsession- like Fin with her baby dolls. A part of me hates it and a part me is thankful that at least he's in to something...isn't that terrible?! He loves Nerf 'shooters' and I've indulged him a handful of times. The rule is absolutely positively no pointing them at people- one has gone in the trash after repeated warnings. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
We hosted playgroup yesterday and the look on some of the mom's faces when they saw our collection of weaponry was pretty priceless. What are you gonna do?! My kid likes what he likes...
I grew up as the daughter of a fish and game warden. I was shooting a BB gun by probably age four or five and hunting by first grade. The guns in our house were essentially displayed on the living room wall on a rack, but it never occurred to me to ever try to play with one. I knew the rules about them.
I guess I haven't given the subject a whole lot of thought. I don't have a gun obsessed kid. I have tutu and fairy wing obsessed kids. I wasn't able to read the article either, but I guess the concept doesn't phase me much. I remember "shooting" at each other when we played GI Joe's (I had a brother and always played with his friends, so we played GI Joe more than anything else).
I agree with Lindsay about not having toy guns that look real.
I couldn't read the article from work, so I can't judge it. I don't read (s)mothering, but know it's reputation is rather crunchy.
Michael has Nerf swords and guns, he has a light saber and a Star Wars blaster. He's not all that into them, but when he does play with them, he has restrictions on their use. Primarily, no faces!
My dad teaches gun safety for the boy scouts and in a few years I will have him teach Michael how to use a pellet gun. When he's old enough, I'll have my dad teach him how to handle a real gun if Michael is interested.
I also plan on teaching Michael about what to do if he's at a friend's house and the friend brings out a gun. That actually happened to me when I was about 13, and I'm glad I knew enough and felt confident enough to walk out of my friends house when she brought the gun down.
And yes, as other have said, your child should never be allowed to play with a toy gun that looks real. I didn't even think they made them anymore, but one of my neighbor's kids has a black pistol that looks real. And the kid's father is a police man! I was shocked.
William and Seth love playing "shoot-em" and bad guys. They don't have toy guns at home, but they did recently get water guns from their grandmother and they play with them at the pool. Regardless of no toy guns in the house, just as you said Laura, anything can be used as a gun. The boys know that I won't play guns, because I don't like guns. They're dangerous and people use them to hurt other people. But I don't stop them from playing. I try to redirect, but Ed likes playing with them, and seeing Seth fall down when he pretends to be shot is hysterical. So I don't forbid it, and I try not to make a big deal out it. But I also try to reinforce that real guns are dangerous and are not toys and hurting people is not okay.
Great topic! And I hope people who don't like Mothering will still try to read the article because it's a really good one. I'm not a big Mothering fan myself, but my sister sent me that article when I was panicking about Cole's love of weapons and it really helped.
My husband and I are both very anti-guns, but our child is very pro-guns. He has actually done the "eat my sandwich into the shape of a gun" thing which was sort of good because he was actually eating.
Our current compromise is this: We don't buy toy guns. We've told him that real guns are very, very dangerous and that he is to never touch one. If he wants to turn his blocks or PB&J into a gun that's fine. We don't tell him he can't, but we don't play the game with him. It still makes me cringe though.
Also couldn't read the article but had to comment because Jake is gun and sword obsessed. it stems from 1) good versus evil and 2)knowing Daddy was a former Marine.
Like Beth I am not comfortable with guns but like many of the other posts, I also found it was useless to forbid toy guns in the house because Jake would take just about anything and pretend it was a gun so we now have a handful of nerf shooters but they can't look anything like real guns and we have rules about how they are played with.
Interesting post and discussion. This is one area where Joe and I disagree but I trust Joe's judgement so even though I am not 100% comfortable with it, he will teach the kids gun safety. He has on one occasion so far taken out one of his old BB guns and let the kids shoot it at targets. I am glad to see other posters mentioning going a similar path.
We're more into turning everything into swords, which becomes a problem when they start hitting each other over the head.
Hubby owns guns. They are locked in a safe at all times. So far we have not broached the subject with the girls because I'm not sure it's age appropriate, yet. However, we WILL have a big sit down conversation about the dangers of guns and what to do if you're ever around a gun (leave the area and find an adult).
My girls own squirt guns and they don't look like real guns. I like the "no realistic toy gun" rule that other parents have mentioned. We recently went to a birthday party where the family had a lot of toy guns... and they all looked real. I'll admit to being a bit bothered by that for so many reasons.
I wasn't able to access the article, but this is a great topic. With much distress on my part (because I don't like guns myself) we decided to give Cooper a nerf gun earlier this year and he has a few squirt guns and a large water gun from the grandparents. I don't know where his obsession came from prior to this, but the one time I remember is that he saw the slightly older neighbor boys all outside playing with them and from that point on asked about them much more than he had before. Ben owns a hunting shot gun (hasn't been used since he was maybe in high school?), which is safely put away in an area Cooper cannot access in the house, I am sure he doesn't know we own one. Ben also wants to get a handgun at some point. Also, I should point out that my parents live in Texas and like Lindsay's husband my dad has his concealed carry license.
On a somewhat similar topic, he wants to be Darth Vader (or as he says, Dark Vader) for Halloween which is going to necessitate a light saber purchase.
General safety rules apply to his play with the nerf gun, and water guns-- never at anyone's head and in particular with the nerf gun, he cannot shoot it at anyone, just at walls or across the room.
Cooper did go through a gun safety course put on by the local police this summer at a camp he attended. Kind of like stop, drop and roll they teach stop, don't touch, find an adult. It must have made an impression because Cooper remembers that. We also discussed it at home and went through the materials the police sent home with him on the topic. Overall I feel the same way about this as I do other topics- to try and be as honest as I can with Cooper and not try to gloss over and create mystery about it.
I don't think you ban weapons but I know we haven't really brought them into the house much.
I like everything Lindsay wrote.
We did finally get nerf guns that the kids enjoy playing with. But there would be no mistaking them for the real thing. I, also, found that if anything if they want to pretend then they will that something is a gun.
Great article! Thanks for sharing.
You shared this article with me last year when being in the mixed age classroom lead to gun play at age 3.
Many posts echo a good response to how to deal with what is inevitable, esp with boys.
With B it takes the shape of talking about Spiderman and Batman. We have tried to focus on all their other powers outside of shooting.
But with that said B and Eli were playing jail involving sand toys with guns earlier this week.
Go figure.
Did you really use "hella" in a sentence?!
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