Why Children Need Make Believe Violence

[bannockburn]

jakemccoy

Thanks for the extremely insightful article. Pretty much supports my experiences and observations over the years.

 

[#shooter]

Nice posts and a good article. I am truly at a crossroads on the subject. On one hand we do protect kids from violent video games and movies yet on the other they can play violence (guns, swords, etc). I played with toy guns as a child and also did stupid things with a BB gun. I don’t want to forbid something only to increase his desire to abuse it, but I fully intend taking him to the range someday and use real guns responsibly. Logically it seems play killing seems wrong, practically speaking boys love doing this. I guess the best compromise is that they can play with toy guns but there should be rules on how to play with them. When he actually wants a toy gun I will probably get him one, until then I will be happy playing cars and building blocks. Maybe we can skip toy guns and move right into a youth .22lr. I can hear all the parents laughing at me, I'm screwed.

 

[Kingcreek]

I have enjoyed reading some of the preceding psychobabble but not feeling like delving too deep today so I'll limit my comments to this:
I grew up with toy guns, cap guns, homemade slingshots, and we played with them freely. I developed into a healthy, over 50, adult male. I have never been troubled with violent or pschopathic thoughts. but then, I also had limited TV, never had video games, never took ritalin, adderol, prozac, etc. All of my "violent" (creative?) childhood friends and family have likewise become responsible citizens without psychsocial issues.
no science- just casual observation.

 

[Farnorthdan]

My kids know the difference

I have taught my boys the difference between real guns and play. They both started shooting real guns at 4, single shot .22's. Bottom line, its a responsible parents duty to teach their kids about guns just like drug/alcohol abuse, inappropriate touching etc.

I would much rather have my boys have a deep respect for guns and know that they should never play with real guns without myself around, my main concern is the occasional times when they might be at a friends house and come across another adults gun or be able to recognize inappropriate/dangerous gun behavior by their friends and to call me so I can remove them from the situation.

I am doing nothing more than teaching them what my dad taught me.

As far as playing with toy guns, I'm all for it, I did it when I was a kid. I also believe that its a great opportunity for the parent to use these play times as an ideal opportunity to stress the importance of gun safety and proper handling, I want my boys to be familiar and comfortable with and around guns, this is how we instill in them the love of guns and the understanding that guns need to be a part of our lives forever if personal freedom is to continue.

My boys are 8 and 12 and are allot safer on the range than most the FUDDs I see there.....


DS

 

[otter]

No guns in our schools

Talked to an older gentleman the other day who said he and the other boys always brought their guns to school since you could usually shoot a squirrel or a rabbit on the way home. It was responsible of boys in his day to provide some food for the family. Later in life he went to a high school that had a shooting range in the basement, they kept .22 rifles in their lockers, no one ever went postal in class.
In WI if you have a loaded gun in the house and a kid, you can get a serious fine. How much self defense can you have with a gun in 1 part of the house and the bullets locked in another part of the house? Just tell the bad guy who is breaking in to wait a few minutes.
There are parts of the world where children are trained with real weapons at an early age, I don't think our politically correct Barbie doll playin boys stand a chance in the next couple generations, my boy will be a leader when that time comes, I am training him with respect and understanding of weapons and he will no doubt shoot rifle expert in the Marine Corps too.

 

[Mt Shooter]

I had one of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR9ojNddiSI

The sticky caps where green, the plastic bullets where Grey. Wish I still had it, had a holster and Roy Roger shirt to match the white hat.
I also had a replica of what think was a M14 it made machin gun sounds for when Trigger was in the barn and I was playing army. Had a green shirt and a plastic helmet to go with it.

I think I turned out okay, haven't killed anyone, raise two boys, one was a marine.

Oh ya I drank water from the hose!

 

[inSight-NEO]

Tough and controversial subject. It used to be "cowboy and indians" make believe...standard stuff. These days, it may as well be about acting out "gangsta" fantasies. Different times, different strokes...

Toy guns, video games, toy soldiers...whatever. Its about acting out chilidish fantasies and scenarios without (hopefully) any propensity or desire for true, adult like violence. Plus, there is the factor of simple, positive aggression release and oh yeah... having fun! Many will purport that games and plastic guns encourage youth violence, but I say this is essentially crap as this stuff has been around for many, many years.

"Playtime" for children and the means thereof have not really changed much as far as Im concerned. Rather, such things (in todays world) have unfortunately, for many reasons, taken on a whole new, perverted meaning. Its just a stupid shame (thanks in part to shameless, irresponsible media coverage..but I wont go into that).

Outside of living in a bubble, proper parenting, guidance and/or mentoring usually goes a very long way. Even then, some will go astray. But, many wont. Its always been this way to one degree or another and it will never change.

 

[wrs840]

Jeez... Me and the wife and kids have Nerf-Gun wars in the house all the time. We laugh our asses off (and maybe learn something about strategies and tactics). My son likes the belt-fed whoppers. I like slinging two of the six-shot revolvers and pretty much take the Wyatt-Earp "I'm invincible" approach.

This is a suberbly okie-dokie family activity. Try it.

les

 

[Big_E]

I gotta say I am mostly on the side of, boys will be boys but, I will not tolerate my kids (this is going to be a long time away) making physical contact in play fighting ("soft" hits are okay, but actually going all-out will be saved for martial-arts class.) I had all kinds of toy guns and action figures when I was a kid. My cousin, my neigbors all had toy guns and we would have a blast (pun not inteded at first.)

I did and still do play violent video games and I have turned out very balanced. U have to let kids learn the dangers when they are still doing harmless things. One time I was play fighting with one of my friends and threw him to the ground and saw that he was really hurt, so then I realized that it was a bad thing to do to a friend. Zero-tolerance parents are still few in #'s but its best to ignore them and if they confront you, all I do is tell them to lighten up or get intimidating and show that I believe my kids will turn out to be okay as long as I do my part and tell them to stop harrassing me.

I am for the orange tips on guns, because if I was a police officer and had some kid pointing a gun that I couldn't tell the difference, I would shoot. I would feel terrible afterwards too.

 

[Elvishead]

I was in a Ghetto type area were I thought I might have needed to use deadly force.

If that twelve year old would have killed me, I'd be dead, and he would have been out of prison in ten years.

Things are different now.

It's not the toy gun's, it's the toy parent's that is the problem.

 

[HarleyFixer]

Using BB guns to slay birds and small vermin taught me the finality of death and the power and responsibility of real guns."
That sums it up.

+100

 

[Whatsit]

Groups of dogs engage in play 'violence' frequently in which they take turns 'killing' one another. This play not only hones the skills needed in pack hunts buts serves to teach the individual dogs on how to check their behavior and moderate their play so as not to hurt one another. Play violence plays a large role in establishing social order and 'moral' code in the pack. Dogs who continually hurt others in play are ostracised. Watch a group of puppies play sometime - it's amazing.

Play violence in kids probably serves much the same function. While we don't actively hunt in packs, I'm sure that we learn checks in violent tendencies through play and ultimately discourage actual violence as norms are established through play.

 

[vanguard]

My son is 6 and my neighborhood is filled with boys. Rest assured, kids still play with guns. Heck, I have a 12 year old neighbor that dresses as a confederate soldier and carries a wooden rifle nearly every weekend.

 

[runrabbitrun]

I still play with toy guns and I'm 47.

Good post Whatsit A+

 

[danprkr]

But when my brothers and I were playing "cowboys and indians" or "army", it wasn't so much about violence as it was about emulating adult behavior (mainly from all the TV shows and war movies we watched)

I think part of this though is that what we emulate from the movies makes us better. I personally think that the world would be a MUCH better place if all men tried to be like John Wayne. I know his movies and Louis L'Amour's books were a huge influence on the type of man I've attempted to make myself as I matured. Can't honestly say that I've hit that mark, but I can say that I've always done my best to live up those types of ideals. And, I think that playing those make believe rolls out when I was a child helped set it into my psyche even though I wasn't consciously aware of it until much later.

 

[Deanimator]

The ability to act violently is a MUST for any human being.

Teaching a child that "violence never solves anything" is not just a lie, it's child abuse, every bit as much as telling a child that Draino is good sprinkled on cornflakes.

 

[Deanimator]

In WI if you have a loaded gun in the house and a kid, you can get a serious fine.

I strongly suspect that that's not EXACTLY how it works. More likely, you're liable if a child gets hold of an unsecured firearm and harms himself or another.

 

[Deanimator]

Playing Army is fun to play until you see your grandfather cry on Veterans Day.

I'll bet grandpa would cry longer and harder if he knew his grandchildren were ashamed of him and what he'd done in the service of this country and that it was unworthy of emulation.

 

[danprkr]

that's right that "turn the other cheek" Christian country.

He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 37It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment."
Luke 22:36
Jesus to his disciples at the last supper

Now that makes me wonder if Jesus was totally against violence. I mean the sword was the personal weapon of it's day...

 

[danprkr]

jakemccoy

Liked the article, but it is sort of sad that we need psychologists and studies to tell us that boys and girls are different. I mean I could have told them that, and would have done so far cheaper probably than whatever they spent on these studies.

 

[Prion]

Thanks Jakemccoy

It is perfectly natural to play violent games in ones youth. It is a way of exploring and coming to understand a sometimes cruel, scary, violent world.

I personally can't imagine my childhood without playing army and war games. So much fun and developmentally important.

Sorry, I'm not raising an emasculated son in order to please some overly sensitive liberal who wants to live in a candy coated make believe world.

We are raising a generation of self entitled pansies. Enough with the overprotection and coddling of our children. We are doing them a disservice.

 

[danprkr]

We are raising a generation of self entitled pansies. Enough with the overprotection and coddling of our children. We are doing them a disservice.

Ditto

 

[heviarti]

anybody remember Roy Rogers? what happened to bad people in every episode? they got punched. lesson: do bad things to other people and you get hit. good lesson. it works the other way too; if you do something bad enough to me, at some point I am justified to slug you.

 

[Deanimator]

We are raising a generation of self entitled pansies. Enough with the overprotection and coddling of our children. We are doing them a disservice.

And just as in the 1930s, those who hate and would destroy us are NOT. THEIR children are being raised to believe that violence solves ALL problems, from women's fashion to how entire countries are run.

Those kinds of people are not reasoned with.
Those kinds of people are not pleaded with.

Those kinds of people can only be submitted to, or killed or shown by example that they will be killed if they persist in that course of action.

It was that way with the Germans in 1939.
It was that way with the Japanese in 1941.
It's been that way with Al Qaeda and its ilk since the 1990s.
Until human nature somehow fundamentally changes (magic?), it'll be that way with every gang of low impulse control bullies that comes along until the end of mankind.

 

[Deanimator]

lesson: do bad things to other people and you get hit.

Consequences are "unfair".