excerpts from my life

day by day, meaningful moments , surviving life in the city with a menagerie of pets and 2 kids

Saturday, May 21, 2005

questions

Both my kids are in the care of someone who allows her kids to play with toy guns, swords and knives.

Her decison is explained thus...its pretend. When we were kids we all played with guns and how many people do you know who wound up killing people with real guns? It's imaginative play! Let them be kids.

I am really torn about this.

First, I did not play with pretend guns when I was a kid. I abhorred violence of any kind - even hated cartoons where characters tried to hurt each other. Secondly, the world has changed. There were no drive by shootings, no school entrances framed by metal detectors, no kids stabbing each other in the street when I was a kid. We did not have exposure to violence in video games.

Last week, I found my 6 yr old playing after school with a bunch of kids all armed with their fingers, shoting each other. The rules of the game dictated you had to stay 'dead' for 10 seconds after being shot. Then you could come back to life and join in again. One mother pulled me aside. "My kids would not be allowed to play that game!" I called 6 over for a minute. Whine - "but mom, we're just pretending!" I let it go.

I can't watch 24 hours a day. I cannot stop my tomboy from playing super heroes and bad guys with the boys. All I can do is talk about what guns do. How they don't solve problems - all they do is injure or kill. I hope she hears me.

I catch her watching the news. "I just want to know what's going on in the world" she says. I have had to frame world events in a manner digestable by a 6 yr old more times than I would like. This thirst for news began with 9/11. We have discussed why countries choose to go to war...always relating it back to a playground situation. War is when countries cannot solve their problems using their words. Some countries are bullies. How do you handle bullies at school?

Her take on it all? Sorry American friends but "George Bush is a goofball." "And so was Hitler!"

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