I believe that girls should grow up playing in the dirt as much as their male counterparts, that boys should have play kitchens and strollers. If we treat everyone equally, they’ll be equal, none of this sex-stereotyping, right? I might have believed that before having a boy-child of my own. Now I understand that L is a species entirely separate from me in his boyish interests, boyish antics, boyish energy and boyish sound effects. He makes shooting noises while eating. Explosion noises while coloring. He wants to fight, play with guns and swords, run like a wild thing and get as dirty as possible. He is all boy and he was just born that way. So why fight it?
T and I don’t own guns, don’t like guns. We make it clear to L that we feel this way. So far we’ve kept guns and swords and other toys that L would love out of the house. But does it really make a difference? This is a child who turns his own hands into guns, web launchers, swords. What good am I doing by not allowing admittedly fun toys like water guns, Nerf shooter thingies and the like? As far as I can see, I’m not doing any good.
But no one has these toys. Where I live it’s like an unspoken rule that we, as parents, must frown upon all play violence. So we just deal with our sons wrestling, throwing non-gun objects at each other, and pretending any handy item is a weapon. I’m starting to think that we’re just being silly. Now that I see how my son is, what is really in his nature, I realize that these games are genetically coded into him as a male of our species.
Boys wrestle, pretend to shoot, and play fight because they’re practicing for being full-grown cave-men. Just like puppies and lion cubs wrestle, fight and recognize alpha pups as practice for being grown wolves and lions. Because my child wants to shoot everything, does not mean he’s a violent person. If I handed him a toy gun I doubt his games would change much. His prop would just look better and not fall apart like the Lego guns he constantly constructs.
There is some overlap in what L and S show interest in. They will happily play together in the play kitchen, roll around wrestling on the floor together, argue about whose turn it is with the doll stroller, (by argue I mean L snatches it and S hits him as hard as she can until I pull her off,) but invariably their play ends differently. S can play with a doll and stroller and never think to run as fast as she can and crash it into things while creating loud engine and crashing sound effects. Her games pretty much never end in explosions or traps or bad guys being arrested, and L’s always do.
So, maybe I’ll go ahead and get some water blasters this summer. The good machine gun variety. I’ll just deal with the unspoken disapproval from the other moms as their kids run around like wild people having the time of their lives with toys they don’t normally get to play with.
What do you think about toy guns?
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Motherhood, WTF? 