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April 17, 2007
My Boys Like Shootouts. What's Wrong With That? Plenty!
"My Boys Like Shootouts. What's Wrong With That?" by Jonathan Turley appeared in the Washington Post on Sunday, February 25, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/23/AR2007022301749.html.
I saved this article for my parenting Blog www.awildride.net/blog. I thought it provided some balance to the age old question: What’s wrong with toy guns? In the article, Turley quotes both Michael Thompson, a psychologist and coauthor of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, co-author of the book Who’s Calling the Shots?: How to Respond Effectively to Children’s Fascination with War Play and War Toys.
Thompson feels that parents overreact when children play with toy guns. "Play is play. Violence is violence." Turley suggests that the “key is making sure that kids distinguish between the two in their play.”
Carlsson-Paige argues that toy guns are not part of a normal childhood fantasy. They “really manifest the ideas of adults -- of marketing people who push toys that reflect an adult imagination more than a child's.”
Turley goes on to say “Carlsson-Paige, who has long studied the effect of violence in the media on the social development of children, says it is true that guns and war games are a way of helping some children process the plethora of violent images on television, in videos, in the news. When I asked her about my neighborhood toy gun issues, she told me: ‘If parents ban gun play, they run the risk of cutting off a valuable vehicle children need for processing the violence [because] kids use their play to make meaning of what they have experienced in life, and in this case, of the violence they have seen.’"
After yesterday’s horrible shooting spree at Virginia Tech (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin), I wonder if there will ever be any balance in this country when it comes to guns? Why do we need toy guns so that children can “process the violence they have experienced in life?” What violence do most children in America experience? Sure there are inner-city children who witness gang violence and toddlers who watch in horror as their parents physically battle.
And I’m going out on a limb here. Don't most children in America see violence on the nightly news (without parent discussion)? Or perhaps they watch television programming or go to movies that glamorize violence.
This week perhaps we can all take a moment to remember those who lost their lives yesterday at Virginia Tech. To honor these victims, let's turn off ‘24’ and refuse to pay money to see ‘300.’
Please take a moment to stop, close our eyes, and THINK about what we and our children are watching. What violence can we elminate from our daily media diet?
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