horrid play pre-schooler

[huihiii]

My pre-schooler is currently going through a phase of everything being 'destroyed', 'killed' and 'damaged' when he plays with his say dinosaurs or police figures. My friends with girls just look on in horror and am honestly not sure where he gets it from. Am assuming it's a phase rather than him displaying sadistic tendencies. Right? Did your three and four-year-olds also go through it?

Everyone else who went through your pre-schooler playing like that, did you just ignore it? Try and intervene? Any effective strategies for managing it?

Is this normal for male DC because they are exposed to so much toxic masculinity on tv from a young age?

@AutumnInBustletown no it's normal because impermanence, death and power are all really big, comes and important ideas so any child (either sex) with half a brain will need to.work through them and work out what they mean. Play is how they do this.

On top of that there is a layer of "what messages do we give boys about what it means to be male" which is all about being strong and brave and powerful and showing a limited range of emotions and that can get very toxic. But that's in addition to the basic "everything you know and love will change and be lost in time" which is a hell of a thing to get your head round at 3 if you think about it.

@AutumnInBustletown

Is this normal for male DC because they are exposed to so much toxic masculinity on tv from a young age?

No. Mine did it before we allowed TV, computer games etc. He'd literally never seen violence or aggression other than in real situations (such as l ds pushing at nursery).

OP I largely ignored it. Sometimes used is as a vehicle to explore empathy - how does purple dinosaur feel when orange dinosaur hits him etc. Sometimes I'd join in the fight as the second dinosaur. It lasted about 6 months.

Lol wait until the next phase. Every other word will be poo, he'll figure out that he can fart and burp on command and if you have an Alexa don't let him find out that it makes fart noises if you ask nicely 🤣

DS doesn't really watch anything violent. We don't have a TV and honestly he just watches peppa pig, fireman sam ans paw patrol on the tablet. He has started a new nursery where they dress up as super heroes but they all do that. So it's not from the screens.