If you don't let your children play with toy guns...

[BoatingLife]

If you don't let your children play with toy guns, please can you talk about how this has worked out for you? E.g. how you have managed this, and navigated it as the children have got older? I feel quite unsure about my DS playing with toy guns. I am definitely not going to buy him any. (He's a baby just now). And I'm quite clear about conversations I can have with him about it, but not about how to manage within the context of other people's children, or when my DC have play dates etc and see others with toy guns, or when he is gifted toy guns...

I know there'll be some who think this approach is wrong and may say "let children be children", "they are just toys", "don't be so woke / namby pamby / liberal" etc etc. But if you are along the same line of thought as I am, and in your gut instinct as a parent it feels wrong, what do you do about it?

I felt the same when he was tiny. As other posters have said he soon made guns out of sticks, lego, paper, fingers! He now has a full armoury of swords, shields, and yes, some guns!

I was like that, never was going to get any. Then they used their fingers and sticks to make guns 😬. I don't like the ones that look realistic, so I got them brightly coloured coloured nerf guns and water pistols and we all join in, which is lots of fun.

I never bought guns but my ds's improvised with whatever they had to hand once they got to school age though. Anything from lego, sticks, food became guns tbh.

Good luck with that!

We never encouraged guns but DS has developed a real interest in the war after learning his great grandad was a solider. He now spends his days playing soldiers with anything he can make look like a gun.

My eldest had a nerf gun but not the realistic looking type. I haven't seen them around for ages, not sure they are popular anymore.

Nope. 2 boys here, now teenagers
They’ve never have had a toy gun ever. Family knew and never gave them one. That was it.

I started saying that if they wanted to ‘create’ one they could do it with a twig/Lego/whatever but I sincerely have never seen them playing like that. Even when they started school and Obviously had more ‘outside’ influence.

It’s not impossible at all if you want to do that.

Btw, I do think that whatever you are watching at home or games they are playing on makes a difference. We’ve never had any ‘war’ games or programs when they were little.

Playing using your fingers as a gun is different than playing with a toy gun or a nerf gun (where you are aiming at someone with a ‘bullet’). I just didn’t want to normalise the idea that it could be fun to 0ay at killing people.
But then they also didn’t have GTA etc... (and still don’t) either - reason has been explained many times to them. They can play with them when they have left home and can buy that with their own money.

None of mine have ever had them or shown any interest- they're girls but had a range of toys - trains, cars, role play sets and outfits for both male and female characters and different jobs, tool kits etc. The oldest has done judo for years and fencing for a while so not completely closed off from fighting but not been exposed to anything with guns in so never had any attraction.

I have seen kids in school making guns with lego though, or taking toy food from the kitchen and shooting people with it. Definitely very common. Can't understand where it comes from - TV?

My DSSs also made guns from toast. I never made a big deal of the ‘weapons’ they seemed to enjoy so much. Thankfully, it’s a phase that has now passed.

My mother completely banned guns, violent toys from my brother ...to her horror, he became obsessed with them. He is now a banker

😂😂😂

Fortunately I never had a strong opinion on the subject...

When DS1 was 4 we went to a living museum, and they happened to have a 1940s day with reenactors dressed up in wartime clothing and soldiers with deactivated weapons. Something clicked in DS's brain, and his face lit up and WW2 (&1) became one of his things. He has since gained a diagnosis of HFA. At 9, he loves really dry documentary channels on the Smithsonian detailing battle strategies, and weapons and can distinguish between different marques of different countries tanks/ arircraft/ weapons. His history teachers will be in for fun when those topics come up...

Resistance is futile.

If it has a right angle, it's a gun. Trees grow many different guns, or other dangerous weapons/ tools such as scythes. If he goes too far, at least I can shoot him with my own fingers or blast him with an air bazooka If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

I am tighter on computer games especially with a younger sibling in the equation. I will defer violent computer games as long as is viable. Fortunately at 9, he's still happy with Minecraft (although some mods do go further) and pokemon.

My ds has never bothered with actual guns because he prefers the hand to hand violence of swords. Which he used to use whilst wearing in his sisters Elsa dress.

He has made his own gun occasionally out of anything to hand though 🤷‍♀️

Some pps remind me of my SIL, who was adamant there would be no violent play, no tv, no plastic toys, and no shouting along with a host of other rules to create a gentle, calm, tat free home. Fair enough.

She even had a lovely little wooden croquet set. How charming, how quaint, how effective it turned out to be as a weapon when eldest son smacked youngest son round the face with it. That led to an A&E trip and a long chat about no violence etc. To be fair, he didn't do it again, instead younger son used the mallet on my DS as a sort of swinging axe.

My DS trained up on Disney and cowboy films new to duck but not to remove the toy because that 'would be mean'.

In conclusion, where there's a will there's a way, no matter how hard mummy tries.

@BoatingLife yes, but if you just throw you hands in the air and say oh well I won't do anything as it's pointless, you're surely sending out the wrong message to your child and normalising this?
But it is normal little boys (and girls) have always played with guns in does not mean they will grow up to be aggressive.

Yep my DS has stick guns or uses his fingers as a gun My DS is 4 now. We have water pistols which he loves too, it's a slippery slope.

People will buy them for them. They creep in. My DS loves police cars and a few playmobil police cars have come with little guns for the officers . Yes you can whip them away and bin them but they don't unsee them. They ask where they are, it's like forbidden fruit.

Gun guns aren't so much of thing now. Kids don't play cowboys & Indians.

To be honest I haven't been anti gun but I do say to DS don't pretend to shot people. I have explained once someone gets shot they die like a dead bug ( he gets that.)

I think it depends how strict you are about the rule. We have no realistic looking guns like we had as children and I don't allow violent computer games.

But we have lurid coloured water pistols and flashing light and buzzing 'lazer guns' and nerf guns and wooden swords and bows and arrows (DD once announced to the entire audience at a pantomime that she got a crossbow for her birthday). I'd rather they played with a water pistol or nerf gun than played fortnite TBH.

Ah PFBs 🤣

You know we've all played with toy guns for generations and the percentage of society that has turned into serial killers is minuscule right??

If you are saying no to guns what about Wands when he's old enough to watch Harry Potter or light sabers when he's into Star Wars

Don't be "that" parent

I allowed water pistols but not anything that looked like a real gun. Once they got old enough to question it I explained that it made me uncomfortable, that I didn't feel it was right to make a play and a joke about something that was killing real children somewhere else every day. I added that whatever they felt about it I had a right not to feel uncomfortable in my own home. No one in my family has played with toy guns since my greatgrandmother first banned them- with pretty much the same motivation as I had. We've still grown up into well-adjusted adults who haven't struggled socially more than other people.

It's not that I believed they would grow up into serial murderers: it was simply that I thought it inappropriate to make a fun game of it at the time.

I don't buy or have realistic-looking toy weapons in the house for various reasons. I've thankfully never had to deal with someone trying to gift something like that nor have I had anyone insult my choice in that.

Beyond that, I don't try to control it - just like I don't control if my kids play with makeup with their friends even though I don't buy it. I find not making a big deal out of it allows them to explore without getting obsessed with the taboo and, when older, allows us to discuss it and how it's just a choice their father and I made for our own reasons.

Guns are better than swords for small boy imaginative play.
Swords they are much more likely to cause an injury whereas guns on the whole are non-contact.

Not just PFBs. I have several dc, the youngest being 14, and my perspective on this has not changed.

I'm not afraid that they will grow up to be killers. I'm afraid of the possible consequences of trivialising guns.

My dc have the privilege of growing up in an affluent, safe society. They have never felt the heft of a gun in their hand, never felt the recoil, never been momentarily deafened by the explosion and felt the ground shudder. Never seen an injury from a gun or a fresh scar from a wound inflicted violently (they've seen very old scars, but that's a romantic, heroic story, it's not 'real').

If my children want to learn to shoot, I will join a gun club with them. Let them understand the power of a gun. Let them learn to handle one safely and with respect. I've seen enough gung-ho idiots cause injury, fear and damage because they thought they knew how to handle a gun. No, they knew how to play with toys.

I didn't encourage or buy toy guns for DS, but kids do improvise and other people bought them for him.

Now an adult he wants to learn to use the real thing. I'm not sure that that what we did made much difference at all tbh.

Just curious, are you never going to let your DC have a water pistol? What about swords? Pirates? Star Wars?

I have two boys. With the best will in the world, you can try to avoid them being exposed to things like fighting and guns, but it will all go to pot when they go to school and start associating with other kids who do play those things. My eldest doesn't have any interest in 'guns' or that type of play. My youngest turns everything into a lazer gun to zap people with.

I think rather than banning this kind of stuff completely, it is better to teach them the difference between 'play' and real life. Explain the consequences of hurting people in real life.

@ivfdreaming I've always found the responses on here saying "ah PFB" to come across as really patronising

Good points @Dilbertian

I was planning to do this

Ds used twig, hairbrush, hairdryer (particularly good), Lego, pens, pencils as toy guns

Yes he ended up having an arsenal of nerf guns and still plays with them (13 soon)