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Holstering pretend weapons
Worried parents take aim at play, media influence
By SHARON MILLER CINDRICH
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: June 9, 2006
"Bang, bang . . . you're dead."
This chant could be heard along many neighborhood streets 30 years ago, as kids pulled out a cap gun, a toy rifle, or a handy finger-and-thumb pistol to nab a bad guy, hold up a pretend bank or apprehend an imaginary outlaw.
Today, however, weapon play that once seemed an innocent part of childhood has become more of a concern. When April Klinter's 7-year-old son engaged in some gunplay with sticks on the school playground, Klinter was called to a school meeting.
"His teacher became concerned about their gunplay and called a group of us to school to talk about it," Klinter, of Saukville, says.
Barb Luedke, who is the mother of boys ages 7and 9 and also works with children, does not allow gunplay in her home.
"When other kids are visiting our house, I explain that we don't have gun play or other weapons," the Wisconsin Rapids parent says.
According to a study by the Children's Medical Center in Washington, D.C., about two-thirds of parents felt it was never OK for a child to play with toy guns, and a similar proportion responded that they never allowed their children to do so.
While a majority of parents may not like gunplay, controlling a child's interest in weapons can be difficult.
Families such as the Martenssons of Wauwatosa struggle daily to encourage non-weapon play despite their children's seemingly innate interest in guns.
"I have two boys who make everything, including their sandwiches, into guns. We had banned toy guns from the house, but it doesn't really matter. They make guns out of anything and everything," says Zan Martensson, adding that the boys have created imaginary guns out of sticks, croquet mallets, even nibbling their toast into the shape of a gun.
War play has been around for ages - artifacts that suggest toy weapons have been found from ancient Egypt and the Middle Ages.
Just a few decades ago, children played with cap guns and little green army men and parents barely blinked an eye.
So what's the difference now?
Television, says Diane E. Levin, adding that increased exposure to media, advertising and real world events plays a larger part in children's daily lives today, increasing their interest in weapons and directing their play.
Levin, author of "The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent and Teacher Needs to Know," is a professor at Wheelock College in Boston who has been researching how violence affects children's social development for the last 20 years.
Written with research associate Nancy Carlsson-Paige, "The War Play Dilemma" explores the issues of war play in relationship to societal influences and the developmental needs of children.
The authors found that an increase in media violence has a direct effect on the war play of today's children.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average child watching two hours of cartoons a day will see 10,000 violent incidents each year on television alone.
Video games with weapon themes and online computer games focused on combat are also readily available to today's youths.
Referred to as Generation M, for media, today's kids are consuming media faster than any other segment.
Two-thirds of youths 8 to 18 years old have a television in their rooms, and other media outlets, including video games and Internet use, have increased media consumption almost an hour a day over the last five years.
Children today are exposed to more than eight hours of media content daily (including moments of multitasking when they're experiencing more than one kind of content simultaneously), according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report.
Marketing and commercial advertising have also changed, Levin says.
"Until 1984, there was a limit on television advertising minutes during children's programming," says Levin.
In 1984, the broadcasting industry was deregulated and product-based shows became legal.
Toy and television industries began positioning thematic toys and products alongside programs that reinforced the desire for those products.
"Industry products makes a childhood culture that seduces children into it," says Levin, resulting in less creative play and more scripted imitation of programs instead.
Exposure to world violence, including images of war, also influences children interest in weapon play.
Real-life video of war seen on 24-hour news channel broadcasts and Internet news stories on world violence are easily accessible by children and reinforce what they experience in the world of fantasy violence.
An issue of gender
"I firmly believe it is genetic," Martensson says of her sons' interest in weapons.
While her boys are making guns out of sticks and nibbling toast crusts into revolvers, Martensson says her 9-year-old daughter is generally not interested in war play.
"Although she will pacify her brothers at times and do it with them, I have not ever seen that this is the type of play she initiates on her own," she says.
Klinter agrees. "My daughter has never really shown interest in playing with guns other than occasionally shooting a squirt gun at her brother or the dog. Her brother is a different story. He has been a toy-gun-toting mini-NRA member since he was about 4."
Historically, men were the primary users of weapons for hunting and fighting.
Levin, however, believes it is much more than genes.
"Whatever influence genetics and biological predispositions play, the society is doing so much to escalate and magnify the differences in gender that we can't even answer that question," Levin says.
While she acknowledges that gender and violence are definitely linked, she believes media influence plays a very significant role in connecting the two. "Marketers know kids are drawn to gender information. The more extreme the information, the more kids are drawn. So the muscles on male action figures are bigger."
Identifying war play dilemma
"Many of our neighbors and friends do allow toy guns and make-believe," Luedke says. "I think my boys understand that I don't want them to play with toy guns. When they are at a friend's house, I know that they will use them. We just keep reminding them that guns are a very dangerous weapon and not a toy."
Luedke's husband, Karl, grew up in the '70s at the end of the Vietnam War and remembers gunplay being associated with playing army.
"My dad put a quick end to my participation. He was a Marine corpsman in Korea and very strict about guns," he says, adding that his father forbade him to point even imaginary guns at another person.
"It was a lesson that began my training with weapons," says Karl Luedke, who competed in shooting competitions at age 15, joined the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee ROTC small-bore rifle team in college and trained members of his unit in marksmanship during his service in the Army.
Parents often find themselves conflicted about how much gunplay is acceptable and where to draw boundaries when it comes to their children's experience with toy weapons and violence-oriented play.
"The first thing to do is to identify the dilemma," says Levin, explaining that play is an important developmental process for children, and they use it to explore and work out those issues that they encounter in real life.
An increased exposure to today's media violence and violent current events in the world have created even more reasons for kids to seek out war play and work out their issues of aggression, violence and power.
On the flip side, allowing children to experience excitement and "fun" through the act of killing and shooting is uncomfortable to most parents.
Lessons about power, aggression and destruction as a means of resolving conflict or gaining power are not messages most parents want to reinforce in their children.
"This is a dilemma, and this is why parents feel uncomfortable about war play," says Levin, who believes there are effective, practical strategies for addressing gunplay to meet the developmental needs of a child.
Good gunplay?
Limiting a child's exposure to violence and violent products may seem an obvious solution. However, commercial movies, war footage on television and peer influence make it almost impossible to completely insulate a child from violence.
Working with children on their war play and getting in touch with the content of that play can help them deal best with issues of weapons and violence.
Children are often attracted to toy weapons that are highly structured.
However, these toys can stifle a child's creative play.
A toy weapon that shoots darts, makes shooting sounds or threatening words when used is considered a toy created to be used in a single way.
Toys with commercial ties to television shows or video games that involve weapon play are often used by children in basic imitation, instead of their own creative way.
On the other hand, toys created from a child's imagination allow children to change the use, expand their abilities and reinvent scenarios, meeting their developmental needs.
Guns fashioned from Legos, clay or paper towel tubes can change as the play changes, and children are more likely to direct their own play using these type of weapons.
Before reprimanding and scolding a child who has spent the afternoon creating an arsenal of weapons out of string and sticks from the backyard, Levin suggests talking to that child about the game, identify the difference between reality and play, then encourage the child to expand the imaginary world with questions like, "What if the guns you made shot glue?" Encouraging kids to think beyond the traditional role of the weapon and interjecting suggestions during play can help broaden the content of the play and take the focus off of the violence.
Klinter realizes that the gun games her son plays are not always something she has complete control over. However, she does feel strongly about injecting guidelines for play and using the opportunity to talk about safety.
"We try not to make a big deal out of his gunplay, but we have made it absolutely clear that he is not even to pretend to be shooting people," says Klinter, who also feels strongly about reinforcing the difference between play and reality. "I do believe all parents have an obligation to help their kids understand the dangers about real guns."
Karl Luedke agrees. "Guns require respect and training. I believe the earlier children are told how dangerous they are and are taught properly, the better," says Luedke, whose strong feelings about a parent's role in educating children early on spurred him to purchase a BB gun for his oldest son. "Real guns aren't like those on a video game: Your friend does not have three lives, and doesn't get up with a laugh when you pull a real trigger."
Worried parents take aim at play, media influence
By SHARON MILLER CINDRICH
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: June 9, 2006
"Bang, bang . . . you're dead."
This chant could be heard along many neighborhood streets 30 years ago, as kids pulled out a cap gun, a toy rifle, or a handy finger-and-thumb pistol to nab a bad guy, hold up a pretend bank or apprehend an imaginary outlaw.
Today, however, weapon play that once seemed an innocent part of childhood has become more of a concern. When April Klinter's 7-year-old son engaged in some gunplay with sticks on the school playground, Klinter was called to a school meeting.
"His teacher became concerned about their gunplay and called a group of us to school to talk about it," Klinter, of Saukville, says.
Barb Luedke, who is the mother of boys ages 7and 9 and also works with children, does not allow gunplay in her home.
"When other kids are visiting our house, I explain that we don't have gun play or other weapons," the Wisconsin Rapids parent says.
According to a study by the Children's Medical Center in Washington, D.C., about two-thirds of parents felt it was never OK for a child to play with toy guns, and a similar proportion responded that they never allowed their children to do so.
While a majority of parents may not like gunplay, controlling a child's interest in weapons can be difficult.
Families such as the Martenssons of Wauwatosa struggle daily to encourage non-weapon play despite their children's seemingly innate interest in guns.
"I have two boys who make everything, including their sandwiches, into guns. We had banned toy guns from the house, but it doesn't really matter. They make guns out of anything and everything," says Zan Martensson, adding that the boys have created imaginary guns out of sticks, croquet mallets, even nibbling their toast into the shape of a gun.
War play has been around for ages - artifacts that suggest toy weapons have been found from ancient Egypt and the Middle Ages.
Just a few decades ago, children played with cap guns and little green army men and parents barely blinked an eye.
So what's the difference now?
Television, says Diane E. Levin, adding that increased exposure to media, advertising and real world events plays a larger part in children's daily lives today, increasing their interest in weapons and directing their play.
Levin, author of "The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent and Teacher Needs to Know," is a professor at Wheelock College in Boston who has been researching how violence affects children's social development for the last 20 years.
Written with research associate Nancy Carlsson-Paige, "The War Play Dilemma" explores the issues of war play in relationship to societal influences and the developmental needs of children.
The authors found that an increase in media violence has a direct effect on the war play of today's children.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average child watching two hours of cartoons a day will see 10,000 violent incidents each year on television alone.
Video games with weapon themes and online computer games focused on combat are also readily available to today's youths.
Referred to as Generation M, for media, today's kids are consuming media faster than any other segment.
Two-thirds of youths 8 to 18 years old have a television in their rooms, and other media outlets, including video games and Internet use, have increased media consumption almost an hour a day over the last five years.
Children today are exposed to more than eight hours of media content daily (including moments of multitasking when they're experiencing more than one kind of content simultaneously), according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report.
Marketing and commercial advertising have also changed, Levin says.
"Until 1984, there was a limit on television advertising minutes during children's programming," says Levin.
In 1984, the broadcasting industry was deregulated and product-based shows became legal.
Toy and television industries began positioning thematic toys and products alongside programs that reinforced the desire for those products.
"Industry products makes a childhood culture that seduces children into it," says Levin, resulting in less creative play and more scripted imitation of programs instead.
Exposure to world violence, including images of war, also influences children interest in weapon play.
Real-life video of war seen on 24-hour news channel broadcasts and Internet news stories on world violence are easily accessible by children and reinforce what they experience in the world of fantasy violence.
An issue of gender
"I firmly believe it is genetic," Martensson says of her sons' interest in weapons.
While her boys are making guns out of sticks and nibbling toast crusts into revolvers, Martensson says her 9-year-old daughter is generally not interested in war play.
"Although she will pacify her brothers at times and do it with them, I have not ever seen that this is the type of play she initiates on her own," she says.
Klinter agrees. "My daughter has never really shown interest in playing with guns other than occasionally shooting a squirt gun at her brother or the dog. Her brother is a different story. He has been a toy-gun-toting mini-NRA member since he was about 4."
Historically, men were the primary users of weapons for hunting and fighting.
Levin, however, believes it is much more than genes.
"Whatever influence genetics and biological predispositions play, the society is doing so much to escalate and magnify the differences in gender that we can't even answer that question," Levin says.
While she acknowledges that gender and violence are definitely linked, she believes media influence plays a very significant role in connecting the two. "Marketers know kids are drawn to gender information. The more extreme the information, the more kids are drawn. So the muscles on male action figures are bigger."
Identifying war play dilemma
"Many of our neighbors and friends do allow toy guns and make-believe," Luedke says. "I think my boys understand that I don't want them to play with toy guns. When they are at a friend's house, I know that they will use them. We just keep reminding them that guns are a very dangerous weapon and not a toy."
Luedke's husband, Karl, grew up in the '70s at the end of the Vietnam War and remembers gunplay being associated with playing army.
"My dad put a quick end to my participation. He was a Marine corpsman in Korea and very strict about guns," he says, adding that his father forbade him to point even imaginary guns at another person.
"It was a lesson that began my training with weapons," says Karl Luedke, who competed in shooting competitions at age 15, joined the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee ROTC small-bore rifle team in college and trained members of his unit in marksmanship during his service in the Army.
Parents often find themselves conflicted about how much gunplay is acceptable and where to draw boundaries when it comes to their children's experience with toy weapons and violence-oriented play.
"The first thing to do is to identify the dilemma," says Levin, explaining that play is an important developmental process for children, and they use it to explore and work out those issues that they encounter in real life.
An increased exposure to today's media violence and violent current events in the world have created even more reasons for kids to seek out war play and work out their issues of aggression, violence and power.
On the flip side, allowing children to experience excitement and "fun" through the act of killing and shooting is uncomfortable to most parents.
Lessons about power, aggression and destruction as a means of resolving conflict or gaining power are not messages most parents want to reinforce in their children.
"This is a dilemma, and this is why parents feel uncomfortable about war play," says Levin, who believes there are effective, practical strategies for addressing gunplay to meet the developmental needs of a child.
Good gunplay?
Limiting a child's exposure to violence and violent products may seem an obvious solution. However, commercial movies, war footage on television and peer influence make it almost impossible to completely insulate a child from violence.
Working with children on their war play and getting in touch with the content of that play can help them deal best with issues of weapons and violence.
Children are often attracted to toy weapons that are highly structured.
However, these toys can stifle a child's creative play.
A toy weapon that shoots darts, makes shooting sounds or threatening words when used is considered a toy created to be used in a single way.
Toys with commercial ties to television shows or video games that involve weapon play are often used by children in basic imitation, instead of their own creative way.
On the other hand, toys created from a child's imagination allow children to change the use, expand their abilities and reinvent scenarios, meeting their developmental needs.
Guns fashioned from Legos, clay or paper towel tubes can change as the play changes, and children are more likely to direct their own play using these type of weapons.
Before reprimanding and scolding a child who has spent the afternoon creating an arsenal of weapons out of string and sticks from the backyard, Levin suggests talking to that child about the game, identify the difference between reality and play, then encourage the child to expand the imaginary world with questions like, "What if the guns you made shot glue?" Encouraging kids to think beyond the traditional role of the weapon and interjecting suggestions during play can help broaden the content of the play and take the focus off of the violence.
Klinter realizes that the gun games her son plays are not always something she has complete control over. However, she does feel strongly about injecting guidelines for play and using the opportunity to talk about safety.
"We try not to make a big deal out of his gunplay, but we have made it absolutely clear that he is not even to pretend to be shooting people," says Klinter, who also feels strongly about reinforcing the difference between play and reality. "I do believe all parents have an obligation to help their kids understand the dangers about real guns."
Karl Luedke agrees. "Guns require respect and training. I believe the earlier children are told how dangerous they are and are taught properly, the better," says Luedke, whose strong feelings about a parent's role in educating children early on spurred him to purchase a BB gun for his oldest son. "Real guns aren't like those on a video game: Your friend does not have three lives, and doesn't get up with a laugh when you pull a real trigger."
