Aggressive play in 4.5 year old, normal?

[Gargula]

My DS is 4.5 and attends nursery p.ms. Since staring nursery he has begun to play quite "aggressively" - e.g. playing at guns (we don't have any but he fashions them out of stickle bricks), shooting etc.

I am quite concerned about his level of aggression and have raised these with nursery. I know that a lot of his friends play "gun" games so, while i don't like it, i'm not overly concerned by that.

What concerns me more is that he has also begun to say things about "killing" and "death". I discpline every time he says something like this but I'm shocked and very sad that he seems to think nothing of it.

So is this sort of play normal in a 4.5 yr old?

Yep, totally and absolutely normal. We didn't have guns or other 'violent' toys in our house, but eventually gave in when we realised that most boys at that age play 'killing', 'army', 'car crash', 'cut off your arm with my light sabre/pirate sword/whatever' games, and will fashion guns out of any material available. In fact, we found it was safer to provide toy guns then have them using sticks (shudders...)

Well at least is not just DS!

I think i'm just getting worn down with the constant "shooting" of total strangers!

Totally normal and I remember being shocked when dc1 went through it.
As a mum who has had 2 boys go through this stage, I'd focus on teaching him to play these sort of games in an acceptable way rather than go really strict and punish every time he says "kill". I don't encourage these sorts of games but I don't actively discourage them either.

A lot of "boy" movies/programmes have a good versus evil storyline (goodie needs to get baddie before the baddie gets the goodie) and I did not want to have to home ed and ban tv/computer games in order to keep dc1 innocent.

When I say teaching him how to play these games nicely I mean things like not getting into people's personal space (eg. no sticks in people's faces), not shouting excessively, no contact when shooting with lightsabers etc Teachers at school won't bat at eyelid if your son plays these sorts of games in the playground but if he's overly aggressive when playing these games then he could end up in trouble. (You don't say he's physically aggressive when playing gun games but in my experience some children can be)