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Health See other Health Articles Title: Why We Should Let Our Children Play With Toy Guns Click for Full Text! This week a 13 year old boy was found hiding a semi-automatic pistol in his cellar - but toy guns don't make the real thing more enticing Boy dressed as a cowboy Simon Crompton The papers this week were full of anxiety about young boys running wild. A poll for Barnardos found that 53 per cent of adults were worried that children were beginning to behave like animals, and that something had to be done about it. In the same week, The Times published a life-size picture of a semi- automatic pistol that had been hidden in the cellar by a schoolboy, 13, who had become increasingly lured into the gangland culture of South London. Chilling as this story was, the gun reminded me of all those toy pistols I'd held as a boy, crawling through bushes, pretending to kill people when I was a cowboy, a British soldier, James Bond. Had I been a source of anxiety to adults? And should we be clamping down on such murderous tendencies? Anxieties about children's feral behaviour all too easily get out of hand. Of course there's a genuine problem about antisocial behaviour in some areas. But it's easy to draw from that a general message that boys need to be clamped down on and discouraged from any activities involving going wild, getting dirty, taking risks, making noise, and, yes, pretending to kill people. Actually, most middle-class kids need a bit more opportunity to go feral. Psychologists know that children need to learn about themselves and what they are capable of by extending themselves in different environments, learning what they're capable of and where they should set limits. It's one way to head off the sort of risk-taking behaviour that can become antisocial. But wildness sometimes needs a little organisation. There's a world of difference between joy-riding and being taught how to drive around a go-kart track, or between carrying a knife and being taught how to assemble a gun on a cadet course. They both provide boys with outlets for their energies, obsessiveness and the need to prove their worth. A bit of structure turns trouble into fun. You could say the same applies to the England football team, who, under the discipline of Fabio Capello, seem to have found themselves and won five games on the trot. Child psychologists point out that some direction makes “freedom” more rewarding. Take a child to a playground and the challenges are limited. Take a child to an open space, and the possibilities are much greater, but the child may need help to use that freedom constructivively, by teaching him or her to play football, build a hide, or play war. A child who spends hours in front of a television screen will need extra help to find good ways of using that open space and not become bored, which is when the trouble starts. So rather than getting worried about kids running wild, maybe we should start letting ours run wild a bit more, but with a bit more effort to make it a rewarding experience. And my gun problem? It's a similar story. The latest research suggests that playing with toy guns helps young boys' development. Recent government guidance says that fantasy play involving pretend weapons encourages safe risk-taking in boys, who often need a starting point in popular culture to spark their play. So apeing James Bond with a plastic shooter is OK. It's an entirely different matter when it's a real one.
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#1. To: Ada (#0)
It's like a litter of puppies. They learn quickly not to bite too hard when they play. Same thing with boys. Let them play and find out what they're limits are. When I was a kid we had dirt-clod fights, wrestled, had BB guns (and sometimes shot each other) fell off of our bikes, then later rode horses and mini-bikes. We did a lot of semi-violent stuff, none of it harmful, and not one of us turned out violent.
I agree with the Brilliant One. That's just part of growing up a boy. Doing those things teaches us when enough is enough, so when we graduate to real firearms, real cars and real trucks, etc we can do it safely. But tell a boy that something he wants is arbitrarily off-limits, and see what happens...That is where we develop more covert skills.
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