It’s me again! Back with another update on how my husband and I started out with one opinion about how to raise our children. . . and after considering all sides of the argument and factoring in our child’s unique personality, completely changed our minds. The first instance I wrote about was how I finally accepted Barbie for my daughter.
And here we are, with my son at 4 years old: play guns.
Let me start by saying that I grew up in East Texas. Boys around there have pellet guns well before 10 years old. When my own brother turned 21, he did not buy alcohol — he got a concealed handgun license and a new revolver. Granted, he uses it mostly to shoot tin cans with my dad off of the back porch, but still. I am no stranger to gun culture. It’s just that it never appealed to me, personally.
At one time during my single days, I lived in an area bordering on a shady part of town here in Dallas. I asked my friends if they thought I should purchase a firearm. The answer was a resounding “No, Jenny – you are so clumsy you will definitely hurt yourself!“. Which was kind of a relief to me, because I would have had no idea where to start when it came to purchasing or owning a gun.
My husband has possibly never shot a gun in his life, despite being from a military family. Somehow he, like me, traveled through childhood in the midst of gun culture and remained unconvinced. Neither of us have owned or regularly used a firearm and we have no plans to purchase one. It seemed natural to us that our children wouldn’t have play guns either.
For the first 3 years of his life, we thought we were doing pretty well in keeping our son a pacifist. He never saw TV shows where guns would be used. He never had a gun and never seemed to want one. But after 3 years old, he started playing more actively with other children. Many of his little boy friends had play guns, which I am sure he must have seen them use.
And sure enough, by age 4 he was making guns out of everything! I think it started at around 3.5 — we went to the doctor for a checkup and he made a gun out of a tongue depressor! A few weeks ago, I was so proud to see him building industriously with his Tinker Toys for about 30 minutes. When he finished his creation, he brought it proudly over to me and, yep, he had used every Tinker Toy in the box to make a gigantic gun!
For a while, we tried to substitute more classic “weapons” like ninja stars and play swords. Let me tell you, play swords are no less violent! They inevitably end up with hitting his sister in the head or breaking something. So much for medieval weapons!
Finally, last week we were in Gruene, Texas at their quaint General Store. He found the classic pop gun rifles and was so enamored. There were actually two versions available. One version was made entirely of wood and had a cork on a string that popped out when you move the barrel.
The other option was a plastic gun that shot darts with suction cups. In the end, we went with the dart-shooting gun, even though the quality wasn’t as good. It was a gut decision at the time, but now I am glad.
Here’s my logic: with the gun that actually shoots something, we are teaching him about the true action of shooting a gun. When he shoots, he can see it hit something. With the cork version, nothing actually gets hit as a result of his shooting. We are able to reinforce this constantly, especially when he shoots and knocks something over. Hopefully, if he ever encounters a gun in real life, he will have this action-and-consequence lesson firmly engrained and will not attempt to shoot it randomly.
I don’t feel badly about this decision, in retrospect. It has been an opportunity for learning. My husband actually works as a web designer for a recreational education company, which means that he works on gun safety courses as part of his job (ironic since he is pretty anti-gun in his personal preferences!). He was able to pull up the online courses he has helped design and show my son illustrations and audio about gun safety from a hunter education site (found here, if you are interested). A lot of it was over the head of a 4 year old, but we were glad to have the opportunity to bring the topic up. We will continue to work with him on mindfulness when it comes to guns.
Our hope is that if he encounters a gun at the home of a friend, he will know to treat it with respect and not find it so compellingly interesting that he attempts to play with it.
How about you? How have you approached toy guns and gun safety with your children?
