Thursday, August 30, 2007

war games

I took Little Man over to the Dollar Store today after I picked him up from Pre-Kindergarten.

I gave him his money and told him he could pick out one toy. It only took him about 30 minutes.

He ended up picking out a camouflage-colored play machine gun (I know, I know...GASP!) I told him he could get it, as long as he only used it to 'shoot' pretend monsters and didn't point it at people. He agreed that that was what he will do. So far, he's only been shooting into the air. It makes kind of a ratcheting noise and I guess that is the appeal.

A friend of mine won't let her kids have any kind of play gun, not even a squirt gun.
But I saw them every day playing shooting games using their hands as play guns, so kids are going to play like that I guess, no matter what you do. Kids will find 'weapons' in nature too. My husband grew up in Savannah, and there are small, tight cones that come off a tree there - my husband and his brothers would snap off the little stem on the end and pretend they were grenades.

I advise Little Man repeatedly to only point at play monsters and such, and never at people. Any toy needs parental involvement. All my kids have been taught to never pick up guns (if they ever found anything that looks like a gun).

3 comments:

Nomad said...

HI There found your blog searching for Mommy Artist, as I am a Mommy and an aspiring artsit.

Re the gun discussion, we too have the same issues amd I know my kids will and do pretend shoot...after MUCH thought and deliberation I have decided that the actual conversation that takes place wih my kids is the valuable part, the continued conversation that says NO guns are not ok, they are only intended to kill things.
If the kids make them out of toher stuff then I guess we don't need to by them anyway!

Hope you change your mind!!

DD said...

Thanks for visiting and for commenting! Well the gun situation takes care of itself, like all junk made in China, the orange thingie on the end of the gun fell off, so the gun goes in the trash can. (YAY!)

Now at least I know that particular dollar store doesn't have much in the way of decent toys, so we just won't go in that one anymore :)

Nomad said...

HI Darla,

Sorry if that all sounded a little pedantic...and I can spell...LOL,YIKES!!! I was in the middle of making supper supervising homework and trying to finish the comment. I LOVE your work...how do you balance your mommy and creative duties...?

Great Blog BTW.

 

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