Gun Play

[preschoolteacher]

I WOULD allow gun play... except, like others mentioned, I fear what might happen to the kids once they get into school and run into the zero-tolerance policies surrounding guns.

There was a 7-year-old last year who got suspended for biting a Poptart into the shape of a gun. It's ridiculous. I've heard similar stories about kids playing guns with sticks or bringing toy guns into school in their backpacks.

Obviously, we want to do everything we can to protect children and prevent violence, but it's gotten carried away.

[Texasjeepgirl]

I have a no gun policy.

Actually a no weapon of any kind policy. No guns, swords, bombs, knives etc etc. This includes building them with lego etc.

Killing isn't fun and I don't let them pretend it is.

This.
And as a side bar
My husband is a CONCEALED HANDGUN INSTRUCTOR

[blandino]

I DO allow gun play. I have some limitations but I allow it.

Like you said, some kids will naturally make guns out of pretty much anything and like food battles, it is simply not an argument/battle I am willing to get into.

I also live in an area where hunting and owning a gun is a part of life. I HIGHLY doubt that I have a single family that doesn't own a gun. Our community also has youth gun safety courses that pretty much ALL middle school kids take (both boys and girls).

I have also had in care a set of parents who are Olympic Rifle Shooters whom have BOTH won gold medals competing. I am not willing to teach kids that guns are bad as a overall blanket lesson.

Like everything I life, there is a correct way and a wrong way to do something.

Psychologist and author Glen David Skoler has argued that games involving toy guns and swords most often occur as boys are transitioning from the “amoral, self-centered, and unsocialized” world of toddlers. He calls this an “intermediary level of moral functioning,” where boys experiment with “games of good guys vs. bad guys and epic struggles between good and evil.”

Child psychologist Penny Holland reached the same conclusion in her book We Don’t Play with Guns Here, saying that toy gun play is often “part of … timeless themes of the struggle between good and evil.”

http://jonathanturley.org/2011/03/08/the-nature-argument-boys-and-toy-guns/

IMHO, gun play is no more the cause of violence than toy kitchen sets are the cause of obesity.

~just my 2 cents

Today, two of my 3 yo boys used apple wedges as guns at breakfast.

[butterfly]

I've been back and forth on this issue. Currently, I say "no shooting people". If things get wild, I redirect with a non weapon activity.

I have 2 sons who love to shoot, a dh who hunts, it's hard for me to say "no, guns".

Now, when my sons are home, I tell them no shooting games while dcks are here. They seem to get the dcks all wound up and wild with that type of play.

[Texasjeepgirl]

I AGREE that those boys use their imagination to make ANYTHING in to a gun..
That's when I say.. we don't pretend playing guns...
we don't pretend to shoot..

And I'm NOT ANTI GUN

I use it as a teaching opportunity to explain that we don't pretend to shoot
JUST ANYTHING.

That guns are dangerous. People can be killed...
in the blink of an eye...and that guns are to used properly by those that are trained.

[Sunchimes]

It hasn't come up here yet, but whether I allow it later will depend on the kids.

When my city grandson would come to visit us on the farm, we played with bb guns and bows, even pocket knives at some point (learning to throw them so that they stick in the ground-mumbley peg, I think it's called.) Our rule was that you never point or shoot at anything that breathes. That saved birds, squirrels, and butterflies. He's grown now and hunts, but he never went through the stage of shooting things he didn't intend to eat.

[MarinaVanessa]

Today, two of my 3 yo boys used apple wedges as guns at breakfast.

My 2 year old gets everything taken away from him when he gun plays during DC hours with it ... then he uses his hand as a gun. Well I can't take that away can I? . Children are so smart.

[Laurel]

I generally don't allow it but it depends. I sometimes look the other way if it doesn't get too involved. I don't supply toy guns but sometimes they'll make them with duplos. One time I told a 4 year old no guns and he said it wasn't a gun but that he was a firefighter and that was his hose. I 'know' it was a gun cause he was doing some thinking to try to come up with the firefighter excuse (which I thought was very creative, btw). I saw his mind working, .

Laurel