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Early Years (2-6)
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What toy guns can and can’t teach children For nearly a year following our visit, my son remembered what I didn’t get him at the Manzanar National Historic Monument. While he did receive a nifty present from the gift shop, I resisted buying him the one he really wanted: a $5 wooden pop-gun, a replica of the quaint toy that Manzanar-era children played with. He wanted it and I said no, as I denied all requests for all guns. Guns, I said, hurt folks in real life. I’d rather you not pretend to hurt people at play, I said. The “no guns” policy in force at his preschool was, I reminded him, also firmly observed at home. But oh, he wanted that pop-gun. Weeks would go by and he’d shyly or not so shyly bring it up. A full year went by – think of it, a year of books and play and travels – and yet, this past summer, we were on our way back up 395 with plans to stop once again at Manzanar. If the gun was still there, he asked, could we buy it? Before my son was born, I imagined a home free of toy weapons. My childhood exposure to violence and reckless use of guns inspired, or cautioned, me. But soon enough, there seemed to be a veritable armory in our house, most of which had been made by Yours Truly, armed as it were with stiff cardboard and scissors: axes, daggers, spears, swords, bow and arrows, each lovingly handcrafted out of old boxes or packing material. My pre-parenthood theories had been challenged by reality: children’s imaginative play is often fortified with weaponry, and I responded in my arts and crafts way. Still, I held the line at combustion-powered weapon replicas: no toy guns. And then, somehow, the red, white and blue pop-gun at the Manzanar souvenir shop. One popular theory suggests that toy weapons can encourage development of aggressive behavior later on and that they contribute to desensitizing children to the real effects of violence. Studies fail to provide a clear link. We do know that children, whether exposed to violent images through media or not – boys and girls – do gravitate to imaginative play with toy weapons. A colleague attempting to raise her 2 boys with a no-weapons policy ruefully recalled the morning her sons both bit their toast into gun shapes and began a shoot-out at the breakfast table. She gave in right there, deciding that banning weapons had actually increased their cache in the minds of her 2 shooters and believing it would be better for her to be involved with her children’s play, including this disturbing variety. She needed to understand what it meant to them (as opposed to what it meant to her). Smart woman, she eventually embraced limited gunplay (emphasis on play) as an opportunity to teach things: history, personal responsibility, negotiation and morality. My colleague’s experience echoes perhaps the predictable and necessary compromise and nuance of parenting. It’s a challenge, but we parents have to believe that it’s possible to encourage imagination and play, and also teach the complicated stories of the “Shootout at the OK Corral,” world wars and Columbine. Parents can try. Our own policy – we abandoned the all-out ban – recognizes the problem with absolute limits, and we now encourage thoughtful play; also what we call playful thought. When we left Manzanar this year, it was with the almost charmingly irreproachable red, white and blue pop-gun. After a year of thinking and talking and imagining, we like to think we had, as a family, perhaps earned it. Lisa Alvarez is a regular contributor. |
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