Boys playground games banned by school....

[Lollipop888]

Not strictly an aibu as I don’t have strong feelings either way, but ds (8) has been playing armies/war/ww2 in the playground with a group of friends, but came home upset because school have banned them from playing it.

He thinks it’s not fair. I can see school’s Point of view, that pretend shooting etc is not in good taste, but on the other hand, it is just role play, unless it becomes violent, Which obviously is not on. (Ds is very interested in ww2 and is quite knowledgeable about it for his age). I was wondering how other schools viewed this/handled this?

I am not used to boys and the way they play as he has older sisters!

When I grew up in the 60's boys ( and sometimes girls but not as often) would play cowboys and Indians and have little wigwam tents, bows and arrows and the like. My brothers are now successful, kind professionals and family men, they are non violent and have never shot anyone.
When I had my own children from the 80's onwards it was more popular to ban such playing and I went with the flow. My DM remarked that in her opinion a child with an imagination would find a stick while running around with other children and and make it into a 'gun'
And she was right. This is what they do
So when my GS was born and my DD naturally banned all toy guns etc I watched as GS ran around the woods with his cousins ( girls and boys) and, guess what?, they all collected branches to make into 'guns' while they hid round trees from the 'baddies'. ( The girls didn't enjoy this as much as the boys though)
None had been exposed to violence on line or in games at that time, they are all kind, gentle children who know the difference between play and reality

I’m with the school. I wouldn’t be happy about 8 year olds pretending to shoot each other at playtime.

@Marty13

Some people compared playing ww2 to pretending stabbing someone in the street. That comparison is not relevant at all.

The point of being a soldier is protecting your country. The point of stabbing someone is to hurt them. That's not at all similar. IRL soldiers are normal people and stabbers are put behind bars. There is a huge difference that we have already acknowledged, be it in pretend play or IRL, and it's doing children a disservice to pretend they can't separate the two.

I'm frankly baffled by the need so many people have expressed to police play. I've never ever heard of a school banning certain games before (am not from the UK). I think it's a waste of time, unhelpful to the children and a hassle to adults who must enforce it.

OP, you asked "should I encourage, discourage or ban it" - why would you want to do any of that ? Let him get on with it. By all means watch if you feel it necessary, but don't interfere unless the game becomes actually violent or hurtful. You're way overthinking this.

Boy vs girl play - and instead of raising boys like girls, why not raise girls like boys ? Plenty of girls enjoy their fake guns and violent video games.

Also I wonder how all these anti gunplay people manage TV, as guns and violence are a predominant theme there. Should we ban SW and HP then ? If violence is okay in fiction, it follows that it is okay in pretend play - which is a form of fiction too.

The fact is that we live in a world where guns exist. Pretending otherwise helps no one. I'd rather my kids understand guns and violence and their consequences, than be clueless about it all.

I think it’s different in Scotland particularly, with Dunblane being a fairly recent memory for adults who are now of a parenting age.

There isn’t really any difference the two stabbings in your example, the outcome is the same, although the reasons for doing it are different. Both are still violent acts.

The point about play stabbing is to highlight that regardless of the ‘let them play whatever they like’ chat, we all do draw a line in what type of violence we allow them to play. So while you might be fine with your kid having a toy gun, you would be very unlikely to buy them a toy noose or a toy torture rack. You might think it’s cute when they pretend to shoot their friends but you’d probably raise an eyebrow (and put a stop to!) if your kids friend pretended to stab your son to death.

The big problem us that most state primaries don’t have enough facilities in the playground for kids to partake in rough and tumble. Kids need to be far more active. We chose a school based mainly on its outdoor space. I wanted a variety of climbing options, rope swings etc. I hated the idea of my daughter just wandering around at break and coming home clean. I wanted apparatus and mud and a need for wellies kept on site. I think schools would find there’d be far less of these games if there was more physical opportunities at school. There’s too much of sit down and learn attitude and not enough, let’s do maths by counting the woodlice we find under the rockery.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

I think it’s a mistake to think boys can’t play nicely. Energetic and boisterous are used to say violent in my experience.

This. Little girls are just as energetic as little boys but we don't tolerate the same levels of aggression from them.

nonsense, emotional aggression and relational aggression is utterly normalised and accepted from little girls. The deliberate cruelty with which I've seen them treat each other is astonishing, and so much worse than what I've seen from boys. But more astonishing is that because it isn't physical it tends to be overlooked. We recently in my DD's Yr6 class had a case where a boy - let's call him Pete - was elbowed when wrestling with a fellow boy (an accident, but the other boy certainly should have been more careful and been being 'rough'). The 'aggressor' was given a severe punishment. Later that week that same poor Pete was the subject of great unpleasantness from one of the girls in the class, but it was verbal aggression. She did not get a punishment, just a talking to and a reminder that words can hurt. Having spoken to Pete's mother, guess which type of aggression was by far the more painful? We snuff out any signs of aggression in boys, even if it's fun and no one is getting hurt, but in girls we refuse to see it or to deal with the consequences.

wingsandstrings there is much I object to in that post, not least using one anecdote to condemn 'feminine' behaviour, but really the main thing is that this need not be a boys Vs girls debate. The OP has said she worded her title wrongly.

These fighting games often spill over into fighting with ‘punches’ and ‘kicks’ - they may just be ‘play’ fighting but someone will get hurt unintentionally. I would guess this is what has happened and they are nipping it in the bud to stop any more people getting hurt.