Playing with toy guns helps boys develop and learn, say the British government’s child development experts. The Department for Children, Schools and Families has advised staffers at preschools and play groups to “resist their ‘natural instinct’ to stop boys using pretend weapons such as guns or light sabres in games with other toddlers,” reports the Daily Mail.
Fantasy play involving weapons and superheroes allows healthy and safe risk-taking and can also make learning more appealing, says the guidance.
Some teachers “find the chosen play of boys more difficult to understand and value than that of girls,” the guidance said. It praised a North London children’s center which helped boys print Spiderman photos from the Internet to create a “Spiderman House.”
This led to improvements in their communication, ability to develop storylines in their play and skills in drawing, reading and writing.
It’s a return to common sense, writes Betsy.
Dr. Helen, the InstaWife, agrees that aggressive play lets children learn to deal with their feelings.
Just a funny bit. This will surprise no one, but neither Barbie dolls nor toy guns were purchased for my daughter when she was young. Until her third Christmas, however. Just before her third Christmas, she chewed a cookie into the SHAPE of a gun and began “shooting” it. So, I told my mom to go ahead, and make her (my daughter’s) day. A box arrived, make that BOX, with every type of toy gun set imaginable. Police, army, western. Barbies followed, but never caught on except for the cliche butchering of their hair. Today, fourteen years later, my daughter’s hero is Ghandi (and Jung, and some renegade graffiti artist in New York City … Elbow Toe? Oh, and Orlando Bloom) and she really doesn’t dress or look at all like Barbie, nor does she want to.
My guess is that like most things, toys are a type of tool - neither inherently bad or good. *With* toy guns, I tried to guide my daughter to think and examine and decide for herself, and she has. Continuing to place toys she *obviously* was interested in playing (emphasis PLAYING) with would have exaggerated their importance and meaning, and given her little freedom to focus on thinking for herself because she would have been so caught up thinking AGAINST her mom.
I was just been reading William James’s “Talks to Teachers.” He makes similar points in chapter 10, “Interest”:
“Living things, then, moving things, or things that savor of danger or of blood, that have a dramatic quality, these are the objects natively interesting to childhood, to the exclusion of almost everything else; and the teacher of young children, until more artificial interests have grown up, will keep in touch with her pupils by constant appeal to such matters as these. Instruction must be carried on objectively, experimentally, anecdotally. The black-board-drawing and story-telling must constantly come in. But of course these methods cover only the first steps, and carry one but a little way.”
This also relates to “BadaBing’s” comment on the post “Creating Independent Readers.” I agree with the commenter that “approved books” are often vastly less interesting than something a teacher could bring in. How can schools permit lively, daring literature without offending parents or getting sued? That’s a separate issue.
Of course, for the teacher the trick lies in creating a fast bond between the stimulating material and the things the students are supposed to learn. If the bond is flimsy, the kids will go for the initially stimulating material and ignore the rest. In the case of “The River” by Paul Clayton, which BadaBing read to his class, the story became more interesting than the swear words in it. Thus the approach worked brilliantly. Back to William James (whom I read with great interest and slight skepticism):
Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists. The two associated objects grow, as it were, together: the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole; and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing. The odd circumstance is that the borrowing does not impoverish the source, the objects taken together being more interesting, perhaps, than the originally interesting portion was by itself.
When did it become a natural instinct to “to stop boys using pretend weapons such as guns or light sabres in games with other toddlers.”?
Well this is an unexpected and worrisome outbreak of rationality.
What next? A proper introduction into the safe handling of firearms? No, far better to leave children in ignorance and allow them to be instructed by the entertainment industry.
This whole issue reminds me of a story from a friend in Philadelphia, who used to live in a neighborhood where a boy was arrested for accumulating an arsenal of guns (with the help of his mother).He had planned a Columbine style massacre against those who “bullied” him.
My friend (mid 50’s) said that, when he lived there, if someone was bullied, the coach or a teacher would teach boys how to box. Next time he would be bullied - FLATTENED the bully. Letting boys be boys. Seldom was more “adult intervention” needed.
Today, we have “feminized” boys with “no touch” policies. They don’t have an outled for frustration.
Amusing that some parents feel chlideren playing with toy guns will lead to violence. My parents taught me from an early age the difference between toy guns and real guns.
A good friend of mine thought I was terrible for letting my boys (and girls) play with toy guns and swords. She wouldn’t even let her kids play with super-soakers (huge, colorful, squirt guns.) But when her boys got into high-school, she threw them a huge “kegger” in the backyard.
Yes, she is a good friend, but I never really understood her logic on this one. We agree to disagree.
Civilization requires that garbage be collected, sewerage be disposed of and bad guys killed. Those who demean any of these processes or the people who carry them out and their tools are living at the sufference of their betters.
*realizing that an important piece of her daughter’s formative play was overlooked, rushes out to buy a toy garbage truck and Fisher Price Little People Water Treatment Plant*
Darling Z, we have to stop meeting like this.
Video of preschool teacher trying to convince preschooler that he shouldn’t play with a toy gun because he might not know the difference between a real gun and a toy gun. (From 1970s Romper Room recording)
http://www.tvparty.com/g2b/rompergun.ram
The kid ain’t buying it.
When did it become a natural instinct to “to stop boys using pretend weapons such as guns or light sabres in games with other toddlers.”?
We all have different natural instincts. There are people who consider it perfectly natural and acceptable for children to torment small animals, after all they’re just children. So no, it doesn’t surprise me that some parents don’t approve of what I consider harmless, just as there are some common childhood activities that I disapprove of that others consider harmless.
Personally, I tried to push my children away from pretend firearms… and towards pretend swords, halberds, morning stars, maces and other less sensitive-teacher-scaring weaponry. (A Blastech E11 blaster seemed much less threatening than an HK11 automatic rifle and my children were nothing if not unfortunately precise is describing what they were “carrying”.)
Guns & kids: I’ve never understood the anti-gun mania.
My great-grandfather was a gunsmith. My closet, in childhood was divided: on top, my parents’ shotguns; on the bottom, my dresses. I imagine that in grade school, I always smelled faintly of gun oil and cordite.
Long guns, we had lots of. However, I never even saw or handled a handgun until adulthood.
I married a man with a passion for military technology (Joanne knows him and can testify).
For some reason, my younger sister declared “gun play” off limits for her son. He liked most to come to our house, where there were plenty of gunnish type of toys. Some were plastic super-soaker thingys; some were more realistic objects made out of wood, pipe, and duct tape.
BTW, the darling daughter had no interest in pretend guns, but she did use newts (yep, live ones, plentiful in our back yard) as gun substitutes. The drill was–you hold a newt in your shooting hand, head & forepaws pointing at the brothers, tap the tail, and yell, “pew, pew, pew”.
The brothers, being agreeable sorts, would fall over when hit by nominal newt projectiles.
Guns are. As much as some might regret the invention of guns, you cannot unring the bell. What we can do is teach the responsible uses of guns, and yet opposition is high to such teaching. It is kinda like sex. If we don’t teach them, they won’t do it. Right?
As much as some might regret the invention of guns, you cannot unring the bell. What we can do is teach the responsible uses of guns, and yet opposition is high to such teaching.
I don’t know, if you’re unlikely to ever be exposed to a gun (as in urban Canada), then it doesn’t make much sense to spend time how to use one responsibly. If the ratio of non-exposure is high enough, you could lose more kids to accidents that occur during training than accidents that occur because of lack of training.
(for example: .001% of accident * 10,000,000 > .1% of accident * 10,000)
Note: all of this applies to legally owned and operated guns.
However, it may well make sense in American environments where exposure to guns is much more common.
Of course, the original quote could be used to justify learning the safe use of alcohol and even illegal drugs…
I have been around guns and gun training for 65 years and I can’t recall one fatal accident associated with that training. Eddie Eagle’s first lesson, if you see a gun, don’t touch it and tell an adult. The next first lesson, assume a gun is loaded at all times. We continually educate about responsible use of alcohol and, if we made sense, we would teach responsible drug use, too.
Now if we could just teach politicians responsible governing…
> Now if we could just teach politicians responsible governing…
Better start with the electorate then. It is a representative form of government you know.
I linked this at Betsy’s Page, but for anyone who missed it, ‘Saki’ (pen-name of H. H. Munro) wrotes a wonderful short story about exactly this conflict, apparently in 1914 (it quotes a March 1914 newspaper, but shows no knowledge of World War I). I liked it so much I formatted it and posted it several years ago here. Check it out if you like satirical Edwardian prose.
Sorry, I shouldn’t have written “exactly” this conflict: the story is about toy soldiers rathern than toy guns. But the arguments and emotions of the banners are quite familiar.
This attitude may have led to the infamus Oxford Compact, “Resolved, I will not fight for King or country” that convinced Hitler England would not stand in his way. I believe WWI was called by some “The War to End All Wars.”
Tom West - my parents taught (and modeled for us) my sister and I the responsible use of alcohol. At least in my case, the lesson transfered to illegal drugs as well.