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).