Preschool trouble - children, guns, and stupidity.

[Gordon Fink]

I tell my sons that schools have stupid rules just like our country has stupid laws, and they should follow those rules as best they can and leave any challenging of the rules to me for now.…

You are a good man, Don.

I’m not a father just yet, but I know that one of the saddest days of my life will be when I have to explain the realites of this country and of the world to my children. How do I explain to a child that in nation that so arrogantly lauds its own freedom, real freedom is quietly slipping away? How do I explain that in a civilization that celebrates its advancement and progress, ignorance and cruelty still exist as virulently as ever they did in the barbaric past? And how do I explain that there is as yet so little that can be done to correct these problems?

It breaks my heart even to think about it.

~G. Fink

 

[zastros]

When the principal talked to me about our boy doing the same thing (same age) I laughed. She's always realized that I was a knuckledragger and a gun-nut but since I repair the playground equipment she's willing to overlook it.

OTOH Kingcreeks idea about the toy gun and using it to teach the 4 rules is a good one and I'll be instituting it very soon.

And I've just ordered the book from my library.

Thanks folks

 

[secamp32]

My 1st grader came home with a homework assignment. "What would you and your family like the new President to do?" Some examples given "Homeless, health care, gun control, " and a few other liberal causes. My wife was afraid to show it to me. She thought I would call and yell at the teacher. I was going to send in "I would like President Bush to push for a national CCW and to end the ban on guns in Washington DC". That would have given the teacher a stroke. I was afraid that would end up with a visit to the principle's office (For me). The school is run by leftists but I guess thats to be expected here in the PRNY. We settled on " I would like the President ot lower our taxes. It took me 2 hours to explain taxes to my son. He said it didn't make sense, why would they take our money (his toy money) to give to people that don't want to work. Maybe he can explain it to Skerry. :banghead:

 

[wprebeck]

I can't wait for the inevitable "talks" that we'll have with the school regarding my daughter. She is 5, and just started kindergarten this year. Guns are commonplace at our house, since her mom and I are both law enforcement officers. We always carry, obviously, and my daughter has been taught from the day she was old enough to understand, the rules of gun safety.

For her 5th birthday, I bought her a gun (I've got a great wife! Not only did Mom approve, but she went driving around to 4 different stores, in 2 different cities, over an hour away, just to find the gun I wanted). I got her a Rossi matched pair, in .22 and .410. I took her hunting for the st time with "her" gun last week, and she had a blast. She's also shot the Beretta 21A tat we have, albeit with Daddy's help. The full power .22 loads are a bit much on her in that pistol, but she loves the Colubri loads I bought.

She's very safety conscious with her gun, and even did a great job carrying it around while out in the woods last week. Of course, I watch her VERY closely when she has the gun, but she carries it just like she's told to, and is doing pretty good with watching where she's pointing it at.

One of these days, I just KNOW we're gonna get some kind of conference with the teachers, but I'll deal with that IF it ever comes. Luckily, we live in KY, and guns are accepted, for the most part. I'm still waiting for her first conversations with her friends about guns. I imagine they'll go something like this:
"What do you mean your parents DON'T have guns? They're weird!"

Guns aside, my little one is still a girl.....she loves Barbies and dressing up, and all that nonsense. She's just a girl that will be able to field atrip an AR by the time she's 10, that's all.

 

[JohnBT]

It's probably not the teacher's fault. I'd bet she's just following the rules and trying to keep her job. The world's full of silly little rules; life's not fair; they aren't saying he can't play guns, just that he can't do it at school. Do you think they'd let them play if the Indians always won? You should ask.

Meanwhile, a cheap BB gun is good, clean indoor fun.

John

 

[Shootcraps]

The teacher's got real problems. I was in a store the other day and a 3 year old girl walked up to me, pointed her umbrella at me and said "Pow, Pow!".

Of course I did the exact same.

 

[Rittmeister]

How about a teacher's perspective?

I don't post around here much - just lurk and soak up all the valuable information to be had. I'm 27 and a teacher (of music, believe it or not) in Ohio. I've been an armchair commando since I was about 6 - I could rattle off facts and statistics about every gun I'd ever heard of. I now own several, pistols and rifles, and plan to add a few more before I'm done. I was happy that Ohio passed CCW laws, idiotic though some of them may be. Just for the record, my mother tried very hard for several years to keep me from playing "army" with my friends, feeling that I would grow up to be a psychopath, but I still turned out OK

I teach in an inner city school district where a gun showing up on premises is a distinct possibility, though I've not heard of it happening since I started with the district three years ago. All schools in the district have the sticker on the door prohibiting guns on campus. The idea is to promote a safe environment, whatever that means. Yes, it would make sense to teach all students about gun safety, and to impress on them the danger that's associated with handling firearms. However, I have students from such incredibly different backgrounds that this would be impossible, both from the attitude and the performability perspective. The general feeling is just not to bring the idea up at all.

To be honest, the teacher above seems to be concentrating on a non-issue. But on the other hand, sometimes we get tunnel vision. We spend so much time being psychologists, cops, and surrogate parents, that sometimes when we mean well we complicate an issue. We're people too, you know.

And JohnBT probably grabbed the brass ring on this one; in my district, principals have the power to set a lot of discipline policy within their own buildings (and inside district guidelines of course). There's a real good chance that the powers that be at the preschool in question have decided that the "hand"gun is a no-no and must be addressed immediately, and the teacher is simply following her own rules (we've got them too after all).

Don't know if that helped anyone's perspective, or even made sense (it's late here and I'm fading) but that's my humble opinion.

 

[cracked butt]

You put enough silly little rules together and you end up with indoctrination.

If a pricipal or Superintendant of a school is making rules that prohibit "fingerguns", it really doesn't say much for the quality of the leadership in the school.

 

[Ed]

My son is 2 1/2 . I really don't think he has ever seen my guns and he SURE hasn't seen me pointing anything at a person and saying bang. Last week he came home pointing his finger and saying bang. I have no clue what to do. He is to young to recognize the whole gun concept. So I just told him "we don't do that, its rude" He stopped. Its not the playing gun but the pointing at Mom and Dad and saying bang. In a few months he will get Eagle Eddie. I just honestly feel that it wouldn't keep his attention now.

 

[benEzra]

Guns aside, my little one is still a girl.....she loves Barbies and dressing up, and all that nonsense. She's just a girl that will be able to field atrip an AR by the time she's 10, that's all.

My 4yo daughter has already claimed my mini-14 is hers when she grows up.

I've used a toy suction-cup pistol from Wal-Mart to begin teaching the kids basic gun safety. My daughter really picked it up quickly. "Safe diwection...finger off buttmon...finger on buttmon..."[POP goes the suction cup].

She wanted to hold the Choate pistol-grip stock I recently took off the mini-14, so after making sure it was clean of powder residue I let her hold the empty stock, but had her treat it as a real gun. She was able to get a fairly normal grip by passing the narrow buttstock portion outside of her shoulder (buttplate extending behind her), and proceeded to walk around the room with the stock "tucked in." She was practicing good muzzle awareness (going to the rifle equivalent of "position sul" whenever she was about to sweep someone with the muzzle end of the stock). I could swear I saw her slicing the pie around a corner with it...

 

[Justin]

Maybe you should duct-tape your son's hands in an open position and send him to school with a note addressed to the teacher explaining how you agree 100% with the school's Zero-rationality policy.

 

[DRZinn]

"What would you and your family like the new President to do?"

That's a lot like "Have you stopped beating yor wife yet?" No room in the question for the possibility of there not being a "new" President.

 

[hvengel]

When I was in high scool in the 1960s we used to bring guns to school so that we could go hunting after class. No one even blicked an eye let along said something (other than asking what we were going to hunt). We would just lock the guns in owr locker during the day. Now kids get in trouble for pointing thier fingers. How crazy things have become. I don even know what to say. But I think I would have treaded it as a joke and when the teacher said it was not I would have treated him/her as a joke.

 

[Guntalk]

A lot of fun responses here, but to be serious, I would ask for a formal meeting with the teacher and the principal. I would bring someone with me (witness). The person I bring might need to be a professional of some sort. (Doctor, lawyer, etc., but just introduce them as a friend.)

There is a duty to society to stand up to this BS. To accept it is to help it.

Point out that every child on the playground has fingers. Pointing fingers is NOT violence. Pictures of guns are not violence. Talking about the shooting sports is not violence.

Sure, bring up Olympic shooting, but expect it to go nowhere.

Be prepared to be stonewalled, but don't back down. Ask for a written copy of the "anti-violence policy" and see if it specifically prohibits pointing fingers.

Stay calm, but be firm in pointing out the idiocy of this action. Point out that 40% of the households in the U.S. have a gun in them, and that those people are not "violent" because they own guns.

ASK them how you can all work to come up with a more realistic approach to this issue, and put them on the spot to come up with something.

But do not just meekly accept it.

 

[Guntalk]

Question: "What would you like the new President to do?"

Answer: The same as he has done for his first term.

 

[wingman]

If I were young again today, I don't think I would want to have kids. We home schooled up through 8th grade, but that isn't an option for everybody. Even then, it is going to get tougher and tougher.

Same here my thoughts on public school are so negative that I best not start, I guess I would not have made it thru school in this modern age,
my buddies and I had many gun battles, with cork guns, cap pistols and
ended with bb guns at age 10, wow they do sting, Or the trips to the dump
on weekends to shoot rats with 22's, stop at the local filling stations stand
the 22's by the door and drink a cold coke. Yes sir those kids were dangerous all right. Most I knew grew up to be hard workers many served in vietnam, none in jail. Strange now we have zero tolerance and
the violence is worse in school. The liberals will make a better
world no matter how it hurts.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

When I was a lad—admittedly quite a few years ago—it wasn't at all unheard of for kids to bring cap guns and BB guns to school, where we were summarily disarmed, of course, but never made to feel there was something wrong with us.

I guess I'm older than you by a number of years, because when I was in the lower grades of grammar school we commonly wore TV cowboy holsters with cap guns to school, and we were NOT "disarmed." We weren't allowed to discharge caps at school, as I recall, but we spent many a recess playing cowboys and indians, and practicing our cinematic death scene pathos. Funny thing was ... nobody regarded us doing what Gene and Roy were doing on screen as "violent." We knew it was make-believe, the teachers knew it was make-believe, and that was that.

Biggest problem was when two or three people wanted to be Lash LaRue during the same recess.

 

[shermacman]

Thousands of years ago, when ice covered the Earth, we brought rolls of caps to school and we would smash 'em with rocks during recess. The goal was to make the biggest blast, have the fewest left over caps. We did this without eye glasses or ear protection. Yes, there were teachers wandering around the playground. We also played dodge ball, we actually threw rubber balls at each other with the intent to hit. Thirty years later, some of us are still friends...
I don't know how we survived.

 

[Sindawe]

Just for grins...

I ran this situation past one of my chat buddies who was raised and lives in Portugal. She's a teacher and a does not like or see a need for civilan gun ownership. Can not support the use of a gun in any circumstance. Her response when I posed the situation: (paraphrased, I don't have chat log here)

" Those people are just nuts. I don't like guns, but those are just kids being kids and playing make back-believe. Thats not violence. "

When I was a kid, we did not take our toy guns to school. We took real weapons, disguised as the childs playthings known as a yo-yo. Cops and robbers was not a common game with us. The favorite for years was what we called 'Tank'. Groups of kids would link arms or arms across each others shoulders, walk in lockstep then square off and attempt to run over the other groups. Occasionally individuals would be pursued, but they had a speed advantange.

 

[Master Blaster]

There is hope, in my democratic leaning state my daughter who is in 2nd grade, had a whole unit last week on elections and the president. They read about the president in their Scholastic reader.

The class then did their own presidential election vote, 19 children in class,
16 voted fro George W. Bush, 3 voted for John Kerry. My Daughter voted Bush of course.

They must be teaching them the right thing

 

[White Horseradish]

Well, I think Old Fuff nailed it pretty well. There are many things I'd like to do. I'd like to strap on every single gun I own and come pick up the boy from school. I'd like to install a gun rack in the window of my van and put my monstrous shotgun in it. I'd like to give the teacher a 3-hour lecture. I know better and won't do that. At the very least, I'd like to take my boy out of there. I can't do that either.

This is a private preschool. It is the most decent one we could find and fairly cheap. The reason we can't keep him out of school completely is that we don't speak English at home and he needs to learn how to function at a school before he gets to someplace where he actually has to learn something. We also don't want him to suffer language shock and give up either of the languages completely.

I've been giving this a lot of thought. I am holding off on any action until I can speak to a teacher we are friendly with privately and find out what the situation is and whether this is an actual policy or just a personal invention. Also, we haven't had a whole-family talk about this due to our various schedules.

Guntalk, if I bring a professional to a meeting it would be someone I hire. I have no lawyer or doctor friends. What type of doctor or lawyer should I look for if it comes to that?

I am also concerned that direct confrontation might make the teacher pick on my son. Perhaps, like Don said, I should just explain to him that there are things in school that he should ignore...

So far I've expalined to him that there are games that can scare people who don't know how to play them right. He seemed to accept that.

I really like the idea of teaching him proper safety with a toy gun. Any pointers for gun safety materials for younger kids?

I'll let you guys know where this goes from here. Thanks for all your replies.

 

[CAS700850]

White Horseradish

I would like to compiment you for putting the needs of your child above your own desires to make a (possibly pointless) political argument with the teacher.

At my son's daycare, they, too, have a "no weapons, no gun-play" rule, which I see as idiotic since they allow the kids to play superhero/Power Ranger/Ninja Turtle, etc. So, it isn't a non-violence rule, it's a no-gun rule. IN fact, the director made a point of "insructing" me that I was no to wear my sidearm into the building (I've got a badge, and can ignore the sign on the door prohibiting CCW. A perk that makes up for the low pay).

But, like you, we saw the value of the scool. At four, my son is starting to read some words, can write his full name without any guidance, knows his address and phone number, and on a good day can name about 15 states by pointing to them on a map. So, it's a trade off. I accept their rules about gun-play, and discourage him from playing that AT SCHOOL, and at the same time recognize the valuable education he's getting.