Most of what little kids do is pretty cute. Even when they are getting in trouble, they can make a face or give you a look that reminds you that they are still a tiny little mostly innocent person. You’ll see your kids do a lot of things, not all of them good, but almost all of them have an element of cuteness. I recently watched my four year-old son do something that, for the first time, was in no way cute. In fact, it was surprisingly unsettling. He pointed a toy gun at somebody.
That might seem like a fairly minor thing to be considered the most disturbing thing I’ve seen my son do. I’ve watched him touch the toilet seat in a porta potty for crying out loud. But there was something so un-childlike, un-cute, and un-innocent about it that was striking. I know his cuteness and innocence won’t last forever. He’ll be a moody teenager with a regrettable attempt at facial hair someday. But I refuse to believe that increased familiarity of weaponry is a normal part of growing up.
It is very odd to see a little child act that way, but different from the other kid-acting-like-a-grown-up type moments I’ve experienced. There was no sense of melancholy from watching a little kid do something more mature, as if passing some kind of growth milestone. This was not like watching him get dressed by himself without needing me to pick out his shirt. There was also no sense of fun about seeing a kid do a thing meant for adults. When he gets out his little toy lawn mower and follows me around the yard as I cut the grass, that is adorable. This wasn’t “awww”, this was “eewww.”
There is, or at least should be in my opinion, nothing normal about teaching children that a gun is anything other than a means to kill. It doesn’t matter if it shoots plastic darts, Nerf balls, or nothing at all. Turning a gun into a toy takes the lethality out of it, which in turn makes the real gun more dangerous. I understand that this is concept many adults can’t get their heads around, so how am I supposed to explain this to a little boy?
I know he already understood not just what a gun is, but what it does. He calls them “shoot guns.” Never just guns. Their action is built right into the name for him. A squirt gun squirts. A glue gun glues. A shoot gun shoots. Little guy might be smarter than he knows. So I know he knows that they are used to shoot, and I know he knows that shooting hurts. (Side note, if you ever want to spend an hour and half answering difficult questions, watch Pocahontas with small children.) On a few occasions he’s come home from pre-school and let me know that kids were being mean in school and playing “shoot guns.”
So he knows guns shoot. He knows shooting hurts. And he knows guns are used by bad guys in movies and mean kids in school. This combined with his still baby-faced cuteness is what made the sight of aiming a toy gun directly into a person’s face so off-putting. I told him no, that he shouldn’t point it at anybody, and that he wasn’t being safe. I didn’t tell him to put it down and not to play with it anymore, but perhaps that wouldn’t have been a bad idea. It seems my message didn’t completely sink in.
The other day were doing some yard work and he was “helping” me shovel some dirt. At one point he picked up his little toy shovel, pointed it at me, and said he was going to shoot me. He thought he was playing, I thought he was scary. Not because I thought he would actually turn violent with his plastic shovel, but because he so quickly absorbed and mimicked casual gun use. This time I didn’t just tell him no, I raised my voice and was pretty stern with him. I could tell it upset him, but hurting his feelings is well worth teaching him a lesson. And I get it, to some extent kids can turn just about anything into a weapon. Just today my son said his straightened out slap bracelet was a sword. Did I scold him about that? No. As far as I know there doesn’t seem to be a major issue of people getting ran through in this country, and I’m fairly certain my kids face no risk of random samurai related violence. But maybe I’ll check with the school district and see if they have a safety protocol should a school be raided by buccaneers.
Am I over-reacting? I don’t think so. How do I know? Because my wife independently came to the same conclusion. Completely unprompted, she told me how she thought it was upsetting to see her little boy wield a toy gun. Great minds, right. Or one great mind and my mind. Either way, I’m not on an island here.
If we were finally able to get cigarette companies to stop targeting kids, I’d like to think toy guns will go the way of Joe Camel, but I doubt it. Orange tips on toy guns is probably be the best we’ll get. Like how instead of banning candy cigarettes like they did in Canada and England, we said kid-friendly smokes were fine as long as the box they come in doesn’t say “cigarette.” Classic ‘murica.
I’m not going to raise my kids in a bubble or anything. Couldn’t if I wanted. They are already aware of why their school has lock-down drills. Sometimes at dinner we talk about our day by playing “Peach and the Pit”, where our “peach” is the best part of our day and our “pit” is the worst part. Whenever they have one, my daughter says the lock-down drill is her pit. Mine too. For her it’s because she doesn’t like having to be crammed in her classroom’s little bathroom. For me it’s because she lives in a world where lock-down drills are a normal part of school. Just as normal as little boys playing with toy guns.
I Think Therefore I Dad 