Are Toy Guns, OK?

Sunday Morning Sermon - Dec 1 2013

Are Toy Guns OK?

What is violence?

Many parents wonder why their child is so fascinated by guns and other similar weapons that usually are meant to kill and destruct. Parents do not want their kids to view weapons as playthings, and many parents do consider prohibiting their child from even using toy weapons.

Most kids show feelings of live and the intent to connect, affiliate, and share with each other. However, they also possess aggressive feelings and the intent to disconnect, hurt, retaliate, and take from others. In fact, human beings are biologically wired to respond with angry feelings and aggressive thoughts to emotional or physical distress. Boys, for reasons that remain speculative, usually have a stronger aggressive response mechanism than girls

All children understand that the world is filled with aggression because they too have had first-hand experience with their own aggressive thoughts and feelings. The rages of an unhappy infant, or the temper tantrums of the toddler or two-year old are examples of times when children experience strong aggressive feelings. Children who are in the midst of a tantrum are often temporarily overwhelmed with urges to destroy or hurt. Children's awareness of violence is expressed in the common childhood fear of "scary monsters." Children develop this fear whether or not they have experienced other people acting in monstrous ways or have seen scary monster movies.

Although children do not have to be taught about or exposed to aggression and even violence in order to know that it exists, they need an environment in which aggression between people is kept within appropriate bounds and disagreements reach satisfactory resolutions in order to successfully master their aggressive tendencies. 

What is the meaning of Play?

The emotional development of children involves their confronting a progression of challenges that progressively rise to the foreground only to recede into the background after sufficient resolution. The need to master aggression is one of the major developmental challenges facing young children. Children must learn, for example, about the appropriate expressions of anger, the difference between aggressive thoughts and actions, and the fact that aggressive feelings are natural and present in all good people.
The emotional development of children involves their confronting a progression of challenges that progressively rise to the foreground only to recede into the background after sufficient resolution. The need to master aggression is one of the major developmental challenges facing young children. Children must learn, for example, about the appropriate expressions of anger, the difference between aggressive thoughts and actions, and the fact that aggressive feelings are natural and present in all good people.

How do toy guns fit in?

Play is the young child's most important tool for emotional growth. From that standpoint, play is quite serious business. Play is a canvas upon which children paint a portrait of their feelings, hopes, worries, questions, and desires. In playing, children can experiment with solutions and thereby make progress with their developmental tasks. 

Naturally, children turn to play so that they can learn what they need to learn about everything in life, which also includes fraternity and aggression. It is necessary to become concerned about children's relationship to aggression only if they appear to be overly pre-occupied with aggression in their thoughts or actions outside the sphere of play, or if the play aggression has an extremely violent or gruesome character. 

Parents should prohibit and hopefully eliminate unacceptable aggressive words, acts, and behaviors. However, children's aggressive feelings cannot be prohibited or eliminated. Children must have access to their aggressive feelings so that they can play with their aggression and develop more mature outlets. Any parental effort to eliminate these feelings through shame, guilt, or fear may even interfere with children's ability to ultimately channel their aggression into assertiveness, healthy competition, and achievement. Therefore, parents should comfortably accept their children's interest in aggressive play. Play is the arena suitable for a contained and controlled expression of aggressive feelings.

 

Children need time to learn to play successfully with aggression, including learning to play without abusing, scaring or hurting people. Play requires props.  The best recipe that parents can use to support children's healthy mastery of aggression is to permit children to play with aggression, set clear limits about non-play aggression, and offer a family life that models conflict resolution without utilizing excessive aggression, such as corporal punishment.

In addition, the lifestyle that the child grows up has a massive impact on what the child learns what he lives within the home, neighborhood, school and community. If such environments contribute to a very aggressive attitude and nature, then it is automatic that the child will pick this up as a norm and use it effectively in his or her own future, be it planned ot even knee jerk type aggression.

The bottom line here is that, "Children live what they learn and learn what they live". 

Amen!