Am I being unreasonable to not want my 3 yr old ds playfighting???

[dancer77]

To cut a long story short ds was playing with his cousin who is 2 years older than him and they were play fighting. I think 3 years old is too young to be play fighting, wrestling guns etc and told them to stop. I then get comments and dirty looks from others who including mil and dh who seem to think it's ok because that's what kids do.

I know that in the world we live in ds is going to be exposed to this sort of thing and will play fight but do you not think 3 years old is too young or am I being over protective?

Also ds i think has hit the terrible two's a bit late! and thinks its funny to smack and push people and we are trying to teach him that that is wrong so surely we should not be letting him play fight otherwise it's going to confuse him?

Your opinions would be greatly appreciated as me and dh have been arguing over this for a couple of weeks now.

weeeellll
i havetwo ds's and no matter what i say, play fighting is a part of daily routine
its a boy thing

as long as no one is being hurt its normal and ok IMO

play fighting is part of normal development.

Yes, YABU

my ds2, 3.5, is gun obsessed, we never have toy guns in the house, he is not a serial killer he is a little boy. I very much doubt he is going to end up living with me when he's 32 and keeping a stash of weapons mags and pornography under the bed and then go Postal. And tbh if I made an issue of it it would elevate its status in his eyes, IYSWIM

the thing with playfighting, which as the others say is NORMAL, is to let them playfight with Dad or an Alpha Male and then they see jsut how far they can go.

So chill out a little, no offence

there is a theory that it is how boys learn to control themselves - learn how strong they are physically and how to do things without hurting others - and that those that don't get the opportunity to do this struggle to control their physical strength as adults.

As long as they are not hurting each other then probably best to leave them to it - or casually steer them into something else that doesn't bother you so much.