What do I do about my toddler playing with pretend “guns”? I am about as anti-gun as they come — we don’t have toy guns in the house, and I refrain from referring to any toy (like a water gun) as a “gun,” opting instead for words like “shooter” or “squirter.” However, at school, he and some of his friends make pretend “guns” out of legos or sticks and play with them. His teacher (and some of my friends) insist that this play must be stopped, but I can’t help wondering whether it is something that all kids this age do. Is there anything in the data on this?
–– Anonymous
This is a challenging question. Kids love to engage in pretend play. It’s a core part of how they learn about and explore the world and their relationships with each other. Pretend play tends to come out of things that kids know about and experience, including things they see on TV, in videos, possibly in the news.
One kind of pretend play that is extremely common is pretend play with guns or weapons. As adults, many of us have very negative gun associations — war, school shootings. It might be useful to remember that kids may come at this differently — for example, maybe they saw a Transformers episode, or there was laser tag at an older cousin’s birthday party. When your kid goes to create and play with a pretend gun, it isn’t obvious they have the same associations you do.
Moreover, while it is true that aggression and gunplay are probably correlated, causality is quite difficult to establish. And the reality is that a huge share of kids engage in this type of play to some extent.
This is all to say that your experience is very typical. The question of what to do about this type of play is a subject of real debate. There are various papers in early childhood literature working through different approaches on how to handle this (e.g., this one or this one). Some authors have argued that kids need this kind of play, and it should be perhaps managed but not aggressively discouraged.
Part of the issue these authors point out is that unless you’re watching the kids all the time, they may well just hide gunplay from you. Which could be worse, in part because it sends a message that this is something kids cannot talk to you about.
I wish there was a clear answer here, but the reality is that reasonable people and organizations differ in their approach. The only true data-based thing we can say is consistency is important: If there is a rule about gunplay, it should be explained and enforced.
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