Boys in nursery schools should not be discouraged from playing with toy guns and other weapons, the government says.

[Iota]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7163741.stm

now there's a turn-up for the books

Indeed!

See also 'The sun rises in the early morning'

and 'The moon is not made of cheese'.

the moon so is made of cheese - Wallace and Grommit have been there

fight, fight!!!!!!

Actually, my ds started nursery school in September and I have to say it doesn't really cater for some boys interests very well.

I didn't notice this when dd (my first child) went there funnily enough.

choose your weapons mb

I'm ready for you

Very interesting, for the last 3 months i've been helping out at a pre-school as a parent volunteer once a week and there is a group of boys aged 3-4 who always like to play guns.
The playleader is always trying to get them to do other things but these boys always manage to make "guns" out of anything, even bark chippings in the playground.
But i found that it got their agression out in a positive way as when they were repressed they spent most of their time destroying other kids work or annoying the girls.
Double standards in society, what do WE watch on TV and read in the news, its always involving violence or guns at some point and when these boys get a bit older they are on playstations blowing/shooting things up anyway.
AB

Iota, I found the article a refreshing change. My eight year old ds2 has attended after school playclubs and (earlier)nurseries for where gun play,(even making guns out of lego or drawing tanks with guns) has been frowned on or banned outright.

As his imaginative play has centered around armies and superheroes, this 'official' stance has been, IMO really counterproductive.

Over the last four or five years I have had talks with nursery or playclub staff about this and always upheld my son's right to express himself, as long as he is not hurting or disrespecting others. I know how sad my son has been when told his games are 'banned' for no good reason that he (or I) can see.

As a general point, I disagree with people who see young children's gun, superhero and army role play in terms of encouragning them to be aggressive, gun toting adults.

I bet those same people do not link children playing with baby dolls as 'encouraging teenage pregnancies' or children waving Harry Potter wands around as 'dabbling in black magic'

Harry Potter=black magic - that'll bring them out of the woodwork if you're not careful!

I hate seeing children playing with guns- I just think it looks awful. But I do agree that little boys often need outlets for their boundless energy /agression and the pre school environment is so often very girl centered. Generalizing wildly, girls seem to get praised for behaving in ways that tend to come naturally and be easy for them, boys are told off for not being more like girls!

Don't know what the answer is though.

My son loves guns and tanks (he's 4).
He told us yesterday that soldiers love being soldiers because they get to shoot their enemies.
It makes me want to weep. We don't have a tv and so he is never exposed to news. It just goes in, all of it: he loves Superman, Spiderman, Dr Who...he has never seen any of them and has no clue really what they do except that Superman can fly and Spiderman can do webs.
He is a sponge for all of it...No point in fighting it, I agree.

I have always hated seeing boys with toy guns and swore that mine would never have them. They simply made them out of sticks, Lego, whatever they could find. Quite where they got the idea from, I don't know as they never watch any television other than CBeebies and I don't remember seeing too many gunfights on there! I can only assume that they picked it up from other kids at nursery. Last year, I gave in and let them have a couple of toys guns. They wave them about and shout bang a lot but it doesn't seem to have affected their ability to sit and do a jigsaw or some colouring quietly. The aggression definitely seems channelled and controlled. I still don't like seeing them with the guns and I hate it, absolutely hate it, when DS1 says he's going to shoot anyone but you can't fight it. It is definitely an inherent part of boy behaviour and I believe we'd be doing more harm than good in trying to suppress it.

I suppose I am wondering why the focus is on guns. Boys tend to have a LOT of needs that are just not being met by the increasing trend towards earlier and earlier literacy/numeracy/jigsaw-puzzle proficiency etc.

They need to be running around MUCH more than most schools and nurseries allow for. They need to be offered activities in a far more kinaesthetic way. But more than that, it needs to be accepted that they are just not able to sit and concentrate on stuff a lot of the time. Sitting still and listening isn't really a skill that can be taught at this age, IMO, its something that they will just start doing as they get older.

So I think I don't much care about the specifics of letting kids pretend to play with guns. I think that there are bigger issues around how boys are treated in school atm.

I also tend to think that the debate here is normally between those who have boys aged around 4/5 + , and those who haven't

Incidentally, one of our local primaries streams kids pretty much upon entry to reception (which I find really tbh). There isn't much movement between streams at all, right up to secondary transfer. Guess which gender is almost entirely in the bottom set? And which is in the top set? . This is a pretty deep problem, IMO.

I was interested in the article because, like many people, my 2 boys were at nurseries/pre-schools where weapons of any type were frowned upon.

This was never a problem with ds1 as cars have been his passion from a very early age. However, ds2 loves weapons of any type and we now have a huge collection of light sabers, ray guns, water pistols and various assorted guns.

So after a (short) lifetime of apologising to staff members and playdate mummies for his warlike (but not physically violent) tendencies, I can heave a sigh of relief

sprogger-I think you are saying that gun play is different to other play that boys do? Why?

(am genuinely curious. The other side to this is that my son has zero interest in guns, its more that I am kind of leaning towards taking a relaxed approach. Could be easily swayed though.)

A separate thing for me is this- I always feel a little annoyed with is the idea that kids shouldn't play with guns because in play they are somehow trivialising the harm that guns do. I tend to think the opposite, really, I think that in gun play they are often acting out a lot of the crap that we chuck at them through the media, not to mention all the mixed messages about being a boy (eg boys meet with disaproval for fighting etc-but they are also expected to stand up for themselves, not to cry, etc)
. Its bloody tricky, from what I can see)
But then, as I say, I don't have kids who play with guns, so actually I don't really know what I am talking about here.

I'm a bit pissed off that ds's Kalashnikov didn't arrive from Kiev in time for Christmas

Well, if you will wait until the last minute to put your order in, what on earth do you expect?

My brother played cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, good guys and bad guys all his growing life, and yet he has no desire to own or use a gun and is a very nice peaceable chap.

I think we should worry more about the real life influences of real guns and knives that are a regualr occurence in the lives of some boys in the UK

well i was always anti guns as toys and ended up with a ds who was obsessed somehow managed to get hold of a bb gun and take it to school when he was 8 and get caught with it

having a phone call from school about it was not my favourite moment

and this just carried on one way and the other i have thrown out at least 3 or 4 guns at different times and

he still has a massive great air rifle i doscovered last year..he had hidden it in my golf bag

he is 19 now

he is not however a gun toting criminal ..I would however like him to get a job

Well said, MB

DH and I were discussing this the other day too - I remember playing cops and robbers (and cowboys and indians - although I suspect that's very "un"pc these days ) when we were growing up, and DH and his brothers spent HOURS playing those sorts of games.......can't say any of us have grown up with a desire to have and use real guns...

I used to try to discourage DS from gun-play and commercial tv, but gave up some time ago. His playgroup banned all gun-play, but the boys still nibbled their snack-time bread into a gun shape and pretended to shoot each other. They seem to learn it by osmosis! Now he has a toy-box full of pistols and swords, just as my brother and Dad did as kids, neither of whom have an aggressive bone in their bodies. I do hide them in a hurry when the CBeebies crowd comes visiting though

His nursery I expected to be as PC as they come, but they day I saw the head-teacher standing on a bench waving a toy sword above her head I realised otherwise. We've chatted about it and she's of the opinion that you can't fight the boysih tendency to want to play "violent" games, and moreover that the generation running around shooting each other for real is the one that had this type of play banned in school. Simplistic maybe, but she has a point I guess.

I have read 2 interesting books which I would like to recommmend

"We don't play with guns"

and "Bad Guys Don't Have birthdays"

both very thought provoking on the subject of weapons and superhero play in childcare settings

Have a wonderful but very PC friend who was a bit aghast to seeing my children(boys and girls)playing with their collection of weapons and soliders (including conscripted barbies) My eldest daughter, who knows my friend's views, told her "its ok, we're playing UN Peace Keepers" and then pointed to action man and said - "he's Kopi Annan2