what do we think of little boys playing with toy guns?

[headfairy]

I've always been very anti it. Dh won ds a prize at a fair we went to once and he let ds choose a gun which I was furious about, dh said I was being precious but ds spent the next few days pointing the gun at everyone "shooting" them saying he was going to kill them I "lost" the gun pretty soon after that.

Our nanny bought ds a few little bits for his dressing up box recently, he loves being policemen and firemen and she bought him a walkie talkie, a face mask and (it must have been part of a set) a gun that fires plastic darts that have sucker bits on the end (there's also a metal bit behind the plastic sucker which makes them pretty hard when fired at someone which he did all the time). He's only just four and I think they're inappropriate toys so I "lost" that gun too.

Am I being a bleeding heart liberal or are toy guns the root of all evil?

DS is 7 and doesn't have toy guns. He has never to my knowledge (although realise he may have done when I am not there) used lego or his fingers to pretend to be a gun. He has water pistols. He does things with sticks (have never worked out quite what but it doesn't involve shooting type games).

I've never noticed his friends doing gun type playing either. Maybe we are in a small little enclave which isn't actually real .

I wouldn't have any problem with DS (or DD) doing shooting as a sport (to be brutally honest I would prefer it to be at targets rather than animals) but that is very different from a "bang bang you're dead" type game. And I really don't like realistic looking toy guns.

Point taken trillian you're absolutely right of course, dd's a bit young yet for me to know, but ds does get aggressive when playing games with guns etc. I'm not sure if girls have that same aggressive drive. I may well be wrong.

I'm not sure that peer pressure is enough to convince me that playing with guns isn't a particularly nice thing for my ds to do. I don't care if he can make a gun out of everything but the kitchen sink. However I can't help feeling that me buying him toy guns (or other adults responsible for him) is a tacit message to him that it's ok to run around shooting people. I'm sure he's not going to go out and shoot someone when he's older (I sure as shit hope not anyway) but I think those sort of games bring out his aggressive urges even more than any other rough and tumble games that four year old boys play.

I don't buy my ds toy guns but if one crops up in a Star Wars Lego pack he is given for a birthday, I am not going to take it away. It is his property and I should resect that.

My dd is two and loves nothing more to dress up as a pirate and wave her cutlass around

I hate war and violence. I try to set a feminist example and yes it is a cultural thing that stems in part from men and violence. However be careful not to transfer these complex issues too much onto children. I have had a gentle chat with ds about guns and violence and what it can mean in real life, but no I am not going to follow him about and chatise him every time he raises a water pistol or pretends to shoot with his fingers. That is too extreme and disrespectful to his individuality, his need to play in a way which he likes and educates him.

He was into castles and knights for ages. We learnt loads through play and books, about history etc. We couldn't avoid the issue of swords and armour though. As someone said it is largely innocent.

Balance is always the key I think

Nagoo we use the word bouffing. As in "stop bouffing your sister/brother". Had never considered how to spell it though

As an aside my dh is one of three boys. My MIL like me didn't encourage or buy guns herself. However my dh fondly recalls playing gun type games for hours with his brothers. They are all lovely, gentle men now. In fact my dh is a bit of a feminist and an excellent role model for my dd.

Can I just say I love all these "I have a quiet/gentle chat with ds" comments. I CANNOT get ds to sit down long enough for a quiet or gentle chat. If I try especially when he's playing some kind of aggressive game (which of course prompts the need for the quiet chat) he won't sit still, won't look me in the eye, just wants to run off. He will invariably try and bash me with whatever sword/gun/weapon I'm trying to talk to him about.

I guess the answer is to choose my moments... perhaps I need to talk to him about these things when he's more relaxed and quiet.

DS is three, he has a toy gun that shoots foam bullets (from poundland) and a target. The rule is we only ever shoot at the target. If he shot anything else, the gun would be taken away. He is not allowed to point a gun of any description at a person or next doors cat even if he does not shoot it.

He is quite happy with these rules, I am not sure if he will go on to shoot real guns, my grandad did, my brother has had guns and both used to go to shoot clay pigeons and stuff like that.

DD is 5, she never asked for a gun and played for ds' for about 5 minutes when it was brand new but hasnt shown any interest in it.

at Bedhog 's dildo/bong comment. As if.

Have an impressive armoury at home and in a family of v peace loving lefties. Eldest son has now got very much into the historical side of things via the KS2 history they have been doing at school and Horrible Histories on TV, so the weaponry is mainly used as a kind of imaginary re-enactment. He's now quite interested in understanding why someone, or a whole nation, would take up arms. A good friend who is a child psychiatrist banned guns but allowed swords while pointing out how illogical this was. IMO the main thing is that kids are brought up to be kind and never to deliberately harm or hurt another person or their property.

I hate guns. They make me shudder.
2 toy guns have appeared in our home. Like you Headfairy, one came from the fair form bloody hook a duck - a police set thingy. The other is an alien shooter the kids got from an Aunt at Christmas.

I hide them once. Cos' I was never allowing guns into our home. They brought in sticks that are shaped like guns.

Now my 3yr old has a plastic soldier set that he picked at the toy shop with his dad and plays armies.

I give up.

My DD, almost three, has taken to waving her fingers at people and shouting "Bill, bill!". Which turns out, after several days of bewilderment on the part of her parents, to be her approximation of finger gun shooting. "Max does it" at daycare, apparently.

She's also recently taken to saying that things 'killed her'. As in, that completely imaginary spider that bit her killed her foot.

I think we just think it's part of the price of allowing our pbf to mingle with other children, so we haven't really reacted one way or the other. But I wouldn't allow a replica gun in the house.

My mother objects to the amount of toy guns my DCs (both sexes) have, but as my DH is in the army and they regularly see the harm and damage that guns/rifles/rpgs/IEDs do (we have several friends with limbs missing and sadly some that are no longer with us) they know that a real gun should never be pointed at another person and how much a real gun can do. We can't keep guns out of the house when they have to drive past a man with a gun to get to our house that would make us the hypocrites. I do however, explain to other mums of DCs friends that they will see guns when they come to our house to play and if they do not want this then play dates will need to be either at their house or in the park, everyone is entitled to bring up their DC in their own way and I respect that other may not want DCs around guns.

There are estimated to be 10million air rifles in England and Wales. Given that there's a shade under 20million households, that's one for every other house. Counting the fact some people have more than one, and clubs may hold quite a number, then odds are that if we assume a ratio of one airgun er 15-25 households, 1-2 kids in your child's class will have an airgun at home - not theirs, but their parent's or whatnot.

In light of that, it's worth bearing in mind that your kids will probably come into contact with an air gun one day, and quite probably outside the controlled environment of a shooting club.

My advice would be to teach them firearm safety and respect for guns (just as you teach them respect for sharp knives and hot cookers), so if they do come into unsupervised contact, they are safe and not going to get hurt (or hurt someone else).
Teach them the rules, de-mystify them, and de-glamorise them. They're just inanimate objects like knives, cars and cricket bats. Why dress them up as something more taboo? Asking for trouble.

I don't mind water pistols or nerf gun type things, I hate plastic approximations of machine guns etc with lights and sounds, and I would feel extremely uncomfortable with DS having one. (Even though I had one as a child.) I think it's horrendous and don't understand why it's not a totally shocking concept that something which was invented for the sole purpose of killing is replicated as a toy.

I also have a problem with the gender issue here, too, I don't want DS to think that masculinity = aggression, in much the same way that I wouldn't want a girl child to think that femininity = beauty. I'm not saying that only boys play with guns (DS learned about them originally from a girl at nursery) but it is so pushed on them, all the action figures and the playsets and video games and cartoons etc aimed at boys. All guns and aggression and using your force/strength to overcome someone else's force/strength (even if dressed up as good overcoming bad). I don't want him to absorb the message that that's what being a man is about, and I know he will absorb cultural conditioning whatever I do, but I see no need to condone it by having toy killing machines in my house.

Nothing to do with gender stereotyping. DS has made guns out of stick or duplo since he was 2. Don't know why, it appears hard wired

headfairy at the idea of trying to have a quiet chat when a DC is involved in an aggressive type game! It's definitely about moments. Just before bed is a great time, after the story, before putting to sleep. Or when they're in the bath (captive audience!) or DS insists on having chats when he's doing a poo, but I don't have much of an excuse to get out of that one as he still needs me to wipe his bum. Just make sure you keep the conversation general and not accusatory as they will get defensive then and be less likely to take your points on board.

Totally agree that no toy/pretend guns ever point ed at anyone

I think this is the most over-thought modern day parenting dilemma ever. Personally, I don't understand why parents say, "Oh my child is allowed to play with swords, etc but, they are NEVER allowed to play with guns," as they polish their saintly parenting halo.

My 4 (and ALL of their friends) have had the best nights ever running around in the dark with Nerf guns. They are not equating their Nerf guns with death, in any shape of form. They're just having a really bloody good time in the dark. The Nerf guns are only as complicit in that fun as the glow sticks are.

And my 4 are not all boys, by the way. And neither are their friends!

My children have all manner of nerf guns and one of our favourite occupations is playing Nerf Wars, where we fire them at each other with extra points awarded for the bum

LOL Colditz, we do too!

It is a losing battle. From personal experience, you can ban toy guns all you want, but once they get around other children, there will still be sticks, their fingers, LEGO, etc that will all be turned into guns whether you like it or not. We have multiple Nerf and squirt guns, but that is still pretty much all that DS and DD (soon to be 9 and 7) have asked for as presents for their upcoming birthdays.

I am with those who say that it is not guns or knives which make a killer - nor tights a strangler. It is people who do these things and the most important thing is to teach children respect for other people and tolerance. Of course you do have to emphasize the danger which some things can cause used irresponsibly, whether it be booze, cars, motor cycles or weapons of any sort. DH, a soldier's son, has always insisted on gun "safety", even with toy guns, on the basis that if the routines become habit, safety becomes automatic and there will never be a serious accident with a real gun accidentally left loaded. He even insists that caps are removed from toy pistols before they are put away, let alone never pointing the gun at anyone. Banning then will simply prevent that lesson being responsibly and carefully taught and, I agree with other posters, heighten the attractiveness of that which is banned.

Joins the Nerf War people. We have Nerftastic Nerf Gun battles most days. DSs are 13 and 10, and it's great fun.

I have been known to shoot DS2 out of bed in the morning

I don't like it, personally. But I realised that actually a lot of people who object to guns, don't object to swords.

However when they're playing chilren are much more likely to get hurt with swords, because they hit with them (even if they're pretending). Whereas guns (not firing anything) they do it from a distance and don't generally physically hurt. Interesting.

Also is it being silly to object to gun, but then let him have a toy spitfire, which he then uses to shoot down imaginary Me109s?

It's amazing how it is the little boys who like guns though. Dd1 defined a gun when she was about 6yo as "something the baddy has in Famous Five and doesn't do anything with". Ds was using a stick at 2yo to pretend to shoot-we don't have TV and he'd not seen anything with a gun. To this day, I don't know where he got the idea from.