Saturday, August 15, 2009

Freeze

Fighting off the space ship


Indiana Jones with gun and whip (the kid hasn't even seen Indiana Jones)

Recently everything that S draws has guns in it. I naturally lean towards the no gun camp, and as a result, I've caught myself saying things like, "I don't want to hear about guns and fighting." Great. He just heard that there are things that I would rather he not communicate with me.

When I stop to think about it, instead of just following popular mommy opinion, how can he be expected to play so many of the things that are naturally interesting to him without some toy gun involvement. I mean police? With no gun? But you should see the looks at the playground when your little boy invents a game that involves shooting.

So here's to all you moms frozen in politically correct child-rearing limbo. Good luck and let me know if you figure it out.

3 comments:

noelle said...

yeah... it's innate. like they somehow know at 2 years old to pick up a stick and pretend to shoot it. so then you try and think back if there was any kind of shooting in finding nemo or baby einstein. somehow they know.

a little music said...

I remember when your mom had the same dilemma with Aaron. She bought him a doll, and he made sticks into guns. Boys just do that.

Mary said...

I finally gave in. I bought some super soakers--4 of them--and we all had a blast. After a 6 year struggle I found that I really didn't feel like it was that big of a deal. (Stanford replied sorta quietly that it never was :) I found that the more I was against any gun in our house, the more H was for them. And like S he made guns out of all kinds of things. We still have the rule that you can't point them at people (except the super soakers of course) which sorta sticks.

However it all leads to the even bigger (for me) issue of violence in video games. The (so I thought before purchasing) harmless game of Lego (legos are so peaceful, right?) Star Wars has light sabers with which to obliterate and dismember and blasters or something too. I was shocked when we bought it--I didn't that element of it on the store computers somehow. Indiana Jones has a whip and a gun. When I said, "I don't like the violence in this game" he wanted to know why it was any different from Star Wars. Yea. Good question. We're really stuck on this one. Don't buy any video games. And good luck with that. H was just playing at friends houses during each play date instead of at our house. At least now I can threaten to take away his games if he plays during a play date and I can control (after much drama) how much he plays at home. Just get ready.