Discouraging "aggressive" play - should I?

[Gargula]

My just turned 3yo DS has just started to get really into role playing with his toys. Yippee!

Unfortunately most of his role playing seems based around "bashing". Such as:
Dinosaur 1: I'm going to bash you.
Dinosaur 2: No don't bash me, that's naughty.
BASH, BASH
That kind of thing. A bit of me thinks that maybe I should encourage him to play "nicely" - maybe the dinosaurs could have tea together or something. But then again it's pretty harmless and maybe he should have this outlet?

Is this pretty typical 3yo behaviour?

I think this is to be expected, especially boys. DS1 (nearly 3) made a gun the other day out of duplo and said he was going to chop my head off (he's been learning a lot of old fairy tales which are pretty aggressive really!). I guess you just reiterate rules of interacting with people but when it's just roleplaying with dinosaurs you could get too heavyhanded with it. I'd just watch whether that kind of talk enters his conversation with friends.

i think it IS typical to a certain extent, though i wonder how much comes from tv and other outside influences. I mean, I wonder if small boys brought up in the himalayas do as much violent play?
is it inherent or is it actually just a by-product of the world we live in??

anyway, i digress. I think it's typical of most small boys, but that doesn't mean I encourage it.

Just because they all do it doesn't make it acceptable and while I realise they won't just stop I do tend to say "that isn't very nice" or "teddy will get hurt" or something like that

I don't even necessarily stop them (tjho i do stop fighting between the children) but I feel I have to put my side over, and make the point that I do not like violence of any kind

We played workhouses and orphanages with our dolls when my sister and I were primary school age and this involved beating them when they refused to work! We also played bank robberies in which dolls were run over with the get away car and then by the ambulance, so I'm not sure that it's a "boy thing" really. As long as it doesn't enter reality when he plays with other children then it may be ok - it sounds like he knows that "bashing" is naughty anyway! Maybe he is just testing boundaries with toys rather than for real. Only worry if it spills over into fighting with other kids or hitting. My sister was quite violent with other kids - hitting a completely innocent child over the head with a toy spade in a toy shop was fairly memorable...

I do tell them off if they bash each other or say things like 'I'll kill you with my light saber' (waiving an empty tube of kitchen paper in the air...) or something similar...

I do have some politically incorrect toys though, including knights with swords and little plastic soldiers... and two water pistols for the bath.

So I suppose I'm guilty of a) letting them play with toys that are not really 'acceptable' these days and b) they do watch TV and love superhero stuff.

Let him play like that, my son was a total thug with his toys at 3 and he is not really like that at all now (he is a soft so and so).

When my son got a little older I started him in Karate, Rugby, Football, all the physical activities and that is a great aggression release.

Me xx

My dc's nursery has, IMHO, an excellent policy about this.

It starts from the observation that kids (especially boys) have always played war, wrestling, fighting and other 'rough' games. To ask them not to or compare their play unfavourably to others eg 'look at the girls playing nicely in the home corner' is like saying that their play is 'wrong'.

The policy suggests downplaying the violence but developing the role play aspect eg 'why is dinosaur 1 bashing dinosaur 2?'. Also, that children should ask if someone minds eg being 'shot' and that children and adults have the right not to be included in this role play if they wish and should be encouraged to talk about their feelings when appropriate.

I first became aware of this policy when I heard the centre manager saying to a little boy 'no I don't mind if you shoot me and thank you for asking .

My sister and I had toy Lego soldiers with cannons that shot plastic cannon balls and which sat on top of our homemade fortified dolls house, to protect the king and queen inside it. We also had toy water pistols, whole suits of armour including viking helmets and swords, bows and arrows etc. I think these are toys that encourage creative role playing which is a valuable and imaginative way of learning about history, human relationships and social (and anti-social) interaction. I agree that adults need to stop worrying about such imaginative play. In my opinion it is violent video games that are much more of a potential problem, because they are the passive consumption of adult-choreographed violence and aggression (not something the child has dreamed up for themselves based on for example books they have read, or visits to museums) and the child has no way of talking about what they are doing with a video game, or exploring why certain characters might fight or be aggressive in certain situations or in certain time periods in history. Let's face it, old fairy and folk tales are full of fighting, wars, death etc but they have been used for centuries to tell cautionary or moral tales inspiring children to live by society's rules - i.e. the "baddies" (trolls, wolves, witches, ogres etc.) usually die horribly! More modern Superhero tales are also usually very moral and good always triumphs over evil!