GunLink Discussion Forums
General Category => General Talk => Topic started by: LivingDeadGirl on March 20, 2017, 09:00:02 PM
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https://blogs.babycenter.com/parenting/what-to-do-when-a-toddler-plays-guns/
I don't have any children, but I remember growing up in a neighborhood where most kids my age were boys. We had water guns, the foam dart guns, plastic BB pistols, cap guns, etc. We ran around playing all sorts of war games (with and without weapons), including an elaborate version of hide and seek that we called "Bloody Murder". This article came across my homepage of articles I might find interesting.
I started reading the article. The mother in the article is anti-violence and anti-gun. Even though she and her husband took many precautions to keep her son from even knowing any weapon, he still made a finger pistol and shot her in the face over dinner. Unfortunately, she explained to her kid that guns are used to hurt people and animals.
Fortunately, she did research and found that "violent" play is normal and necessary for childhood development. One article she found points out that violent play teaches to kids to control those impulses, therefore, to control their emotions. Another article was about another mother's experience living overseas in Japan, where in school, teachers helped children make paper weapons and they had a community wide water gun fight, where the adults filled the water guns themselves. She later realized that despite this type of play, there is low gun violence in Japan, which to her means, violent play does not mean violent adults.
How did you "violent" play as a kid? If you have children, are they allowed to play toy guns?