teresa

My 4 1/2 y.o. loves gun play, from Star Wars to Revolutionary War to
police chase. Heck, even a postcard of this guy
<http://ibistro.dos.state.fl.us/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/x/0/5?library=PHOTO&it\
em_type=PHOTOGRAPH&searchdata1=hiram%20pistol> recently inspired a
car-ride's worth of pistol play.
I will admit that I had to come to terms with this, but an article from
Mothering magazine from a few years back plus a lot of looking inward
and talking to my husband, who was also a gun-loving youth, made my
embrace of my son's passion complete.
But many--in fact, almost all--of the other parents we know eschew gun
play. They not only don't play along, they say things like, "I don't
want to play guns. Guns hurt," and quickly try to distract the children
with a new activity. I can tell my son is confused. I can tell he's even
a little annoyed. What I have so far told him is that gun play makes
some people uncomfortable, and that it's a good idea to ask them if they
want to play guns first. But he doesn't yet remember this, and anyway,
it feels like a lame suggestion since we both know the parents will say
no anyway.

We have a friend, with whom I had not previously discussed this, whose
son is turning five this week. My son wanted to get her son two
cork-tipped pop guns, the kind he has and loves so much. I called her
ahead of time to see if this would be OK. She said no, kindly, but no.
So now I am feeling a little angry and upset, and my thinking is cloudy,
so I'm asking for some help.

What I don't want to happen is for my son to think that something is
wrong with him since he loves playing with guns. He is a pretty keen kid
socially, and I know he's already feeling something a little "off."
What can I do? It feels like one of those personal parenting choice
things, something I'd feel funny asking a parent friend to indulge in my
child. Anyway, that wouldn't be where their hearts were, and he'd know
it.

Ugh.

Thanks for reading, and for any insights.
Teresa

Sandra Dodd

-=-But many--in fact, almost all--of the other parents we know eschew
gun
play. They not only don't play along, they say things like, "I don't
want to play guns. Guns hurt," and quickly try to distract the children
with a new activity.-=-

That can't possibly be as bothersome as your unschooling will be to
them. :-)


-=- I can tell my son is confused. I can tell he's even
a little annoyed. What I have so far told him is that gun play makes
some people uncomfortable, and that it's a good idea to ask them if they
want to play guns first. But he doesn't yet remember this, and anyway,
it feels like a lame suggestion since we both know the parents will say
no anyway.-=-

Don't take the toy guns to the gatherings. Explain to him that that's
only to be played with kids whose parents don't mind.

He won't be 4 1/2 for long. He'll understand it soon.

-=-My son wanted to get her son two
cork-tipped pop guns, the kind he has and loves so much. I called her
ahead of time to see if this would be OK. She said no, kindly, but no.
So now I am feeling a little angry and upset-=-

Don't be angry and upset. That's unreasonable. You're not giving her
the same choices you're taking for yourself.
Even if she had NOT been kind about it, you already knew she might not
like it when you asked.

There are thousands of gifts you could give other than guns.

Here are some ideas:
http://sandradodd.com/gifts
(and then there are toy stores)

-=-What I don't want to happen is for my son to think that something is
wrong with him since he loves playing with guns.-=-

It's not the responsibility of other people to build your son's self-
esteem.

Here's some prior discussion:
http://sandradodd.com/peace/guns

Sandra




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

Someone responded. I'm separating the name from the response. My
first impulse was to just reject it, partly because the whole other
post was appended, and partly because it had too many typos.

I'm going to try to fix the typos, and the author of it should
probably not claim or defend it. Just let it be "someone wrote...,"
please.



********
I personaly don't like gun play, I think it's wrong to teach a child
that it's [ok] and "fun" to play with a weapon designed for murder. If
you do that's your choice but you need to realize and deal with the
fact that many parent also don't like this kind of play. Try
explaining to your son that most people are afraid of this kind of
thing and to play something else when he's around them?
********

(What I've guessed as "ok" was "on" in the original. Other typos were
fixed.)

Sandra

Sandra Dodd

-=-I personaly don't like gun play, I think it's wrong to teach a child
that it's [ok] and "fun" to play with a weapon designed for murder. -=-

It's okay not to like gun play, but it's not right to claim that a gun
is "designed for murder." That's not true.

And no one is suggesting that a child should play with an actual gun;
you do know that, right?

One of my close friends, whom I've known since he was 20, is a police
officer. He saves lives. He carries a handgun and a shotgun in the
trunk of the patrol car. Those were not designed for murder. He
saves young children from abusive parents. Would you want those
children to fear this man because he has something "designed for
murder"?

Propaganda and emotional-appeal arguments are not a good way to help
children learn about the world around them.
If you want your children to be afraid, then that's a good way to
create fear in them.

-=-Try explaining to your son that most people are afraid of this kind
of
thing and to play something else when he's around them?-=

I don't think it's "most people." And "this kind of thing" was a toy
gun that shoots a cork.

Boys have played with weapons and tools all throughout history. Girls
too, probably, but it's part of the way a boy learns to be a man. If
boys are prevented from having wooden or plastic toy guns or swords,
they'll make them out of lego or tree branches or their fingers. It's
nothing new at all.

My middle son, Marty, was planning for a couple of years to be a
police officer. When he was 14 he went to a junior police academy.
He has a certificate for being the best marksman there. They were
using simulators (practice guns that work like a video game) and paint
ball guns. His experience before then was Duck Hunt on the Nintendo.
It has a toy gun as a controller. No ducks were harmed. No actual
dogs giggled. There was no gun.

Marty had not fired a real gun before that academy week. He hasn't
fired a real gun ever. We have friends who collect guns, who hunt (my
dad was a hunter-safety instructor, but I never used guns myself), and
who have offered to take Marty shooting, but he's not interested.

There is more violence in a mother shaming a little boy and suggesting
he wants to have fun with murder than there is in all the boys in the
world pointing their fingers and saying "bang."

Sandra




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

wtexans

===I personaly don't like gun play, I think it's wrong to teach a child that it's [ok] and "fun" to play with a weapon designed for murder.===

Toy guns are designed for play, not for murder. The purpose is to play with them in a way that you cannot play with a real gun.

Real guns are to be respected . . . much as real knives and real cars (also things that can be used to cause injury or death) should be respected. Learning to respect the harm something can cause doesn't happen by *not* playing with the toy versions of those things.

My son has had a toy weapons collection since he was quite young, and it's invariably something other kids gravitate towards when they're over. Some of those kids are not allowed toy guns at home.

My son has an air pistol and goes to the gun range with my husband from time to time to shoot that pistol and my hubby's shotgun. The kid is a good shot and proudly brings home the targets each time they go, but my hubby says Andrew loses interest out there pretty quickly. He's content going only 3 or 4 times a year; the rest of the time he has no interest in the real guns. He has no interest in hunting, either.

What he likes about toy guns is the very fact that *they are toys*!! Toy guns allow him to play in ways that he has no interest whatsoever in replicating in real life.

Interest in toy guns, or even in real guns, does not mean that interest will develop into wanting to kill people or animals. My husband, my dad, and my brother all own guns, but all three of them hone their marksmanship skills at target practice, period. They love the history of guns, they love the old (long!) rifles that used to belong to my great-grandpa that now hang in my dad's study, they love the skill that goes into making a gun, and they love the skill it takes to become a good marksman. There is *so much more* to guns than "weapons for murder".

Glenda

Joyce Fetteroll

On Jul 10, 2010, at 12:50 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> I personaly don't like gun play, I think it's wrong to teach a child
> that it's [ok] and "fun" to play with a weapon designed for murder.

And I think people could be more objective if they'd read stories of
*unschooled* kids and now grown kids who are treated respectfully who
also play with guns. While it *sounds* like a good theory that playing
with guns leads to "stronger stuff" it helps us be kinder to our
children to treat it as a theory rather than a fact and investigate it
to find out what *really* happens in respectful families.

*Is* the only difference between a gun toting gang member and a
nonviolent suburban child, the fact that the gang member played with
guns as a child?

There are loads of stories from unschooling parents of kids who've
grown up playing with guns, playing violent video games who are
peaceful and joyful. It's not the guns or lack of guns that creates
that joy. It's being treated with respect and trusted and loved for
who they are.

I think the world would be a more peaceful place if people didn't
think it was okay to use force and shame to make others comply with
their beliefs.

Just because a mom believes she's right, if she shames her child or
makes him feel wrong or guilty for believing something different, it's
no different than being pressured by a fundamentalist or militant
vegan or PETA advocate. Pressure to believe and change is far more
likely to make someone angry (and respond violently!) than respectful
acceptance of who they are and their different beliefs.

Joyce



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Beverly

Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>>
> Boys have played with weapons and tools all throughout history. Girls
> too, probably, but it's part of the way a boy learns to be a man. If
> boys are prevented from having wooden or plastic toy guns or swords,
> they'll make them out of lego or tree branches or their fingers. It's
> nothing new at all.


A friend of mine declared her home a gun free zone when her oldest (soon to 18) was a baby, during our La Leche League phase of our friendship. When he was around 2.5-3 we found him playing with a neighborhood friend and shooting him...with the attachment from her breast pump! My oldest, now going on 26, once chewed a piece of toast into the shape of a gun and shot his cousin!

Schuyler

When my brother was 5 my parents got him a BB gun. They had friends who were so
angry at them because Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated and they
saw Sam's gun as a step towards an adulthood of vigilante violence. It was nuts.
It is nuts. My brother, as far as I know, has never killed anyone. Although he
did write a lot of Beavis and Butthead, so maybe he encouraged some questionable
behaviour. It takes so much more than access guns to make a murderer.


That said, part of being social is accomodation. It is in your and your son's
interest that you accomodate your friends' "no gun" policies. Talk to him, tell
him that some parents don't like guns and when you are around those kids playing
with guns isn't something their parents want. And do other things, offer other
things, be rich and engaging within the framework of those friendships.


Schuyler

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

teresa

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:

> -=-My son wanted to get her son two
> cork-tipped pop guns, the kind he has and loves so much. I called her
> ahead of time to see if this would be OK. She said no, kindly, but no.
> So now I am feeling a little angry and upset-=-
>
> Don't be angry and upset. That's unreasonable. You're not giving her
> the same choices you're taking for yourself.
> Even if she had NOT been kind about it, you already knew she might not
> like it when you asked.

This is true.

> -=-What I don't want to happen is for my son to think that something is
> wrong with him since he loves playing with guns.-=-
>
> It's not the responsibility of other people to build your son's self-
> esteem.

I understand that. What I'm wondering is, when does not building another's self-esteem end and treating children disrespectfully begin? I'm not suggesting that a parent feel compelled to play along if my son's gun play upsets him or her, but there are subtle ways to communicate disapproval, and don't these do some damage, too?

For example, if a vegetarian parent, when offered a meatball from a child, were to say, "No, I don't eat meat. Meat is killing innocent animals," wouldn't that be a little heavy? I can get that not everyone else is going to embrace gun play, but I think I need a little help framing the disconnect for my son and for the other parents. Or maybe not; maybe, like you also mentioned, he's only 4 1/2, and this will pass soon enough, and telling him that other people can be uncomfortable with it is enough.

Thanks, too, for the other responses with stories of parents at peace with kids playing guns.

I think I need to thicken my skin a bit, practice the old invisible eye-roll while I walk away with my child, shooting our hot fingers at the Western horizon... :)

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> -=-But many--in fact, almost all--of the other parents we know eschew
> gun
> play. They not only don't play along, they say things like, "I don't
> want to play guns. Guns hurt," and quickly try to distract the children
> with a new activity.-=-
>
> That can't possibly be as bothersome as your unschooling will be to
> them. :-)
>
>
> -=- I can tell my son is confused. I can tell he's even
> a little annoyed. What I have so far told him is that gun play makes
> some people uncomfortable, and that it's a good idea to ask them if they
> want to play guns first. But he doesn't yet remember this, and anyway,
> it feels like a lame suggestion since we both know the parents will say
> no anyway.-=-
>
> Don't take the toy guns to the gatherings. Explain to him that that's
> only to be played with kids whose parents don't mind.
>
> He won't be 4 1/2 for long. He'll understand it soon.
>
> -=-My son wanted to get her son two
> cork-tipped pop guns, the kind he has and loves so much. I called her
> ahead of time to see if this would be OK. She said no, kindly, but no.
> So now I am feeling a little angry and upset-=-
>
> Don't be angry and upset. That's unreasonable. You're not giving her
> the same choices you're taking for yourself.
> Even if she had NOT been kind about it, you already knew she might not
> like it when you asked.
>
> There are thousands of gifts you could give other than guns.
>
> Here are some ideas:
> http://sandradodd.com/gifts
> (and then there are toy stores)
>
> -=-What I don't want to happen is for my son to think that something is
> wrong with him since he loves playing with guns.-=-
>
> It's not the responsibility of other people to build your son's self-
> esteem.
>
> Here's some prior discussion:
> http://sandradodd.com/peace/guns
>
> Sandra
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

teresa

--- In [email protected], Schuyler <s.waynforth@...> wrote:
>
> That said, part of being social is accomodation. It is in your and your son's
> interest that you accomodate your friends' "no gun" policies. Talk to him, tell
> him that some parents don't like guns and when you are around those kids playing
> with guns isn't something their parents want. And do other things, offer other
> things, be rich and engaging within the framework of those friendships.
>
>
> Schuyler

Yes. Thanks for this. That's where I think I am with it--trying to figure out how to be socially accommodating, true to my own beliefs, and supportive of my child.

Blandstein

my oldest son was making guns out of things before I even knew he knew what a gun was or had a name for it.

thecugals

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> -=-I personaly don't like gun play, I think it's wrong to teach a child
> that it's [ok] and "fun" to play with a weapon designed for murder. -=-
>
> It's okay not to like gun play, but it's not right to claim that a gun
> is "designed for murder." That's not true.
>

My Great Uncle has a large gun collection, but has only shot two of them. At a shooting target. He's in his mid- to late-sixties and in fairly poor health (diabetes and bad feet). One night he had been working late, and was on the freeway on the way home, when a group of young men kept pulling up next to him, checking him out, then pulling back again. After a while, my uncle decided to pull over to a rest stop. The other car followed him and pulled up along side him. At that point my uncle reached under his seat, pulled out his gun, and showed it to them. They got out of there as fast as they could. I don't like guns myself and never plan to own one, but I'm glad when guns (carried by cops or by law-abiding citizens) are able to prevent violence.

Also, a professor once told our class that his sister was a Quaker and would not allow her sons to play with guns because they promote violence. But, he said, she forgets that when SHE was a kid she was armed to the teeth!

Beth

Sandra Dodd

-=-What he likes about toy guns is the very fact that *they are
toys*!! Toy guns allow him to play in ways that he has no interest
whatsoever in replicating in real life.-=-

And water guns don't exist in real life, except as toy water guns.
Real world "turn the fire hose on them" isn't fun. That's riot
control. It's not safe. Kids learn that from playing with water guns
and garden hoses.

In the realm of such play, I'd like to point this out: A very cool
tool for filling small balloons with water (or air, but there are
already ways to fill balloons with air) is now available and was
invented by a little girl. We've used a brass nozzle on the end of a
hose, but that's not portable, and turning it off at the nozzle puts
pressure on the hose.

http://www.vat19.com/dvds/pumponator-balloon-pumping-station.cfm
"The Pumponator."
Even if you don't want one, the video is really fun.

They also have a USB/keyboard-controlled desktop nerf-dart launcher:
http://www.vat19.com/dvds/usb-cannon.cfm
I got Kirby one when he first moved to Austin, so he could defend
himself from his roommate.

My kids are not the least bit violent or mean. Kirby studied karate;
he could kill someone. Kirby and Marty both did armored combat with
rattan weapons, but they've messed with real swords enough to know the
difference; they could kill someone. The thing is, they won't WANT
to kill someone.

Someone who has been controlled, shamed and lied to for years and
years might want to kill someone, but he won't need a gun to do that.
Notable murder weapons of the past ten of fifteen years, thinking just
of fundamentalist homeschoolers and other crazy parents and their
children: rock, bathtub, car-into-lake, pillow, exhaust, drug
overdose. I'm not going to keep my kids from using pillows just
because some people are so unhappy they've killed someone with a
pillow. I couldn't possibly take all the rocks out of my yard; I'm in
New Mexico.

Principles over rules.
http://sandradodd.com/rules

Sandra



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=- When he was around 2.5-3 we found him playing with a neighborhood
friend and shooting him...with the attachment from her breast pump! -=-

Oh, that would suck!


(ba dump dum...)

The cutest thing I ever saw a little boy do at a La Leche League
meeting was to pull up his shirt and pretend to nurse his dumptruck.
It was, in his two year old mind, a filling station of sorts. Or
maybe he was just showing it he loved it.

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ed Wendell

Notable murder weapons


I was thinking of some of those listed by Saundra and I also thought of baseball bats, a rope (you can strangle someone with just about anything - even a cloth diaper), an ax, a kitchen knife, concrete, vomit - if someone lets them lay in it and suffocate, I could probably bash someone over the head with our laptop ;) fireworks, fire, Medications - overdose. For my husband, I could slip him some peanut butter or fish and not get him help / hide all the epi-pens.

I really do love my husband beyond reason - I almost slipped and said I love him to death <BWG> - but wanted to throw out how absurd it can get. Anything can become a murder weapon - even a dog.

Lisa W.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-That said, part of being social is accomodation. It is in your and
your son's
interest that you accomodate your friends' "no gun" policies. Talk to
him, tell
him that some parents don't like guns and when you are around those
kids playing
with guns isn't something their parents want-=-

My kids, from earliest ages, asked "Why not?"
They were better, even when they were toddlers, at understanding that
guns were just toys than many grown women, some with college degrees.

Same with video games. They could never really fathom why some
parents were so stridently afraid of video games.

The effect on my kids, without me adding any extreme commentary of my
own (I would try to explain from the other person's point of view,
because that's really what they were asking for), was that they
figured out early on that many rules in other families are irrational,
and many parents care more about appearances than about their
children's wellbeing and joy.

Something I wrote in 1998 has this near the beginning:

------------------------------------------
One day we were watering the back yard and talking about flow
dynamics, although we didn't use that term. We were observing the
speed of the flow, and the swirls, and the "materials" (type and
condition of soil, angle of the hill, all that stuff). I told my
husband he would have LOVED to have grown up in a place where he'd
needed to irrigate. Irrigating an orchard or field is a huge thrill
for those who like to play in the water.

A few days later the kids and I were on the way to the unschoolers'
meeting place, and Kirby (11) had a small water pistol with him. "Is
that empty?" I asked.

"No."

"Well please empty it, because some of the other moms won't want their
kids to get wet, and it's not a good idea to have water fights where
we don't have towels or other clothes."

Ooh, I heard that mom voice and looked at the squirt gun, and it was a
five ounce insignificant little thing, but still... So Kirby said he
would empty it out the window, which he proceeded to do, squirting it
on his hand and discussing how much colder it was to have a wet hand
in the wind than dry.

------------------------------------------

http://sandradodd.com/puddle



Sandra

Sandra Dodd

-=-Also, a professor once told our class that his sister was a Quaker
and would not allow her sons to play with guns because they promote
violence. But, he said, she forgets that when SHE was a kid she was
armed to the teeth!-=-

So playing with guns can lead to Quakerism?
:-)




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ed Wendell

I grew up on a farm and was taught how to shoot - I've never killed a thing in my life even though I went hunting with family - they shot for food and I went along for the social aspect - me the only girl with the men and boys ;) I do remember carrying the rabbits and fowl for them though. Frog gigging too.

My husband was a police officer for a while when we first got married - then he switched to being an EMT (emergency medical tech) and driving an ambulance. Never has he killed anyone. His hand gun from when he was an officer is locked away for safety reasons. I have my dad's two guns from when he was a teen some day they will belong to Zac.

Our son who is now 16 has always loved guns / weapons - in the beginning we had a no play/fake gun policy for the first 4 to 5 years - and he always made his own play guns with sticks, legos, fingers, anything! We even took him out and showed him what a real gun would do because we have guns in the house - we shot oranges and apples - I don't remember the age but probably 4 or 5. We were not trying to scare him but to show him the real danger of what a real gun would do. Our thought was no play guns - only real guns when he gets old enough. ???? ANYWAY around age 4 or 5 we gave up when it was obvious that a no play guns policy was not diminishing his passion. We gave up when relatives took him shopping for his birthday and they let him pick out what he wanted and of course he came home with an arsenal!!!! <BWG> He soon had swords, dart guns, squirt guns, cork guns, rubber band guns, pop guns, nerf, etc.

All that is to say he is 16 and he and his dad are off playing Airsoft today. Military simulation airsoft. They get dressed up in complete outfits and replay tactical events. There is a lot of history involved too - they do research on the event, etc. For example last fall they re-enacted the event that the movie "Black Hawk Down" is based upon . They ended up going to multiple thrift stores to get the right type of clothing after researching Somoli type dress for those years. Today they are wearing full military multicam (not allowed to wear current fatigues - just the discarded styles for safety). Their guns are exact replicas - with orange tips of course. They wear authentic uniforms.

Last week we drove across the state to go to a state park and on the way I was looking at a book about the state and found that there was a really good museum on a military base we would be within an hour drive of (actually 3 museums within one building). We went to the park, enjoyed the park, got a hotel room for the night and then drove another hour to the base the next day and enjoyed a day of military museums.


Zac is also very knowledgable about any aspect of most wars throughout time and the world. He knows social and economic causes of wars and results of war. Inventions that were brought about because of wars and how the invention of a particular weapon advanced society, etc. Yesterday we were at a book store and he found a book on Samuri swords that he bought - he loves anything to do with the Samuri and Japan.

It's not about the killing to him - though a few good explosions in a game or a movie is thrilling to him ;) We just went to see "The A-Team" and he loved it!

He went through a stage for 2 years where he made wooden swords with a piece of wood, a carving knife and some fine grit sand paper. His best ones hang on his bedroom wall.

His love of weapons and warfare have led to knowledge and a passion for:

Roman, Greek, Norse mythology.

Knights Templar and other knights, Scotish, Celts, Picts, Saxon, Norman, Brits, Viking, Roman, Mongol, Chinese, Japanese,
European - not so much but a little, Egyptian, USA, etc.

American history - social and economic as well as wars and weapons.

Carving, flinting, making chain mail, dioramas, making stop motion films, action film making, still life photography, drawing, map making, hand made a Samuri warrior costume for himself and his horse for a Halloween contest/party and won first place, etc.

Various music from various time periods: calssical, bagpipes, Scotish / Irish / Celtic, African drumming, Swing, Big Band,

Movies - and READING :)

Martial arts - he took HapKiDo for 5 years.


I could go on and on as his web of interests are so inter woven with history and warfare but I'll end with - our son is one of the most kind and gentle souls. He has never hurt a living thing. He goes out of his way to help those in need, etc.


Lisa W.











[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Su Penn

On Jul 9, 2010, at 10:13 PM, teresa wrote:

> What I don't want to happen is for my son to think that something is
> wrong with him since he loves playing with guns. He is a pretty keen kid
> socially, and I know he's already feeling something a little "off."
> What can I do?

We just say, for instance, that the other kid's mom isn't comfortable with her son having popguns and that we should choose something else as a gift. I've said to my kids over and over again that different people make different choices about things. They get it. They see it all the time among our friends and even within our family. They have opinions about it, but they don't seem to take others' different choices as direct reflections or judgments on theirs.

Su
mom to Eric, 9; Carl, 6; Yehva, almost 3
tapeflags.blogspot.com

Su Penn

On Jul 10, 2010, at 12:50 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> I personaly don't like gun play, I think it's wrong to teach a child
> that it's [ok] and "fun" to play with a weapon designed for murder.

"Afraid" is a really strong word. So is the idea that kids with popguns are playing with a weapon designed for murder. My brother collects guns, including, I recently learned, a semi-automatic machine gun which my 14-year-old nephew has fired. Nobody mistakes the machine gun for a pop-gun, I don't imagine. But it seems like some people mistake the pop-gun for the machine-gun! Nobody takes the pop-gun to the firing range, and kids don't run around the woods at my brother's house jumping out from behind trees and aiming machine guns at each other. If you think about it for a bit, the differences are pretty obvious.

Su
mom to Eric, 9; Carl, 6; Yehva, almost 3
tapeflags.blogspot.com

Su Penn

On Jul 10, 2010, at 8:06 AM, teresa wrote:

> For example, if a vegetarian parent, when offered a meatball from a child, were to say, "No, I don't eat meat. Meat is killing innocent animals," wouldn't that be a little heavy?

It would be for me. If a parent was explicitly telling my kid judgmental things about my and my children's choices, that would be a problem for me. I have a lot of vegetarian and vegan friends, though, and it would be OK with me if they said something like, "No, thank you, I don't eat meat. I'm not comfortable with animals dying so I can eat," or any other I-statement kind of thing about the choices they've made. Because that is an opening for discussion that my kids might or might not be interested in.

But statements of opinion as if they're fact, that kind of thing, I'd challenge. And if it got to be too much, I'd step back from the relationship.

I used to be part of a homeschool group that included a mom who was so anti-sweets she wouldn't let her son keep a stick of sugarless gum someone had given him. She was always telling him that sugar was poison and she didn't let him have it because she loved him and all that kind of thing. When Eric was 3 or 4, we were at park day and her son was saying, "Why is Su letting Eric eat that? Doesn't she know how bad it is? Doesn't she love him?" We don't see much of them anymore ;-)

> Or maybe not; maybe, like you also mentioned, he's only 4 1/2, and this will pass soon enough, and telling him that other people can be uncomfortable with it is enough.

It has really been enough for my kids. Eric, at 9, has become interested in bigger, deeper conversations about this kind of thing, and how people decide what's right for them, and so on, but at 4, 5, 6? "Your friend's mom doesn't want him to have pop-guns, let's pick something else," really is probably enough.

Su
mom to Eric, 9; Carl, 6; Yehva, almost 3
tapeflags.blogspot.com

Sandra Dodd

-=-> It's not the responsibility of other people to build your son's
self-
> esteem.

I understand that. What I'm wondering is, when does not building
another's self-esteem end and treating children disrespectfully begin?-
=-

That's a very confusing question. :-)

You can't change the world to meet your need to have others treat
children respectfully.
You can treat your own child more respectfully.

-=I'm not suggesting that a parent feel compelled to play along if my
son's gun play upsets him or her, but there are subtle ways to
communicate disapproval, and don't these do some damage, too? -=-

Yes. And your disapproval of the friend's mother is going to do
damage too.

Find the positive, uplifting, happy part of the friendship. Help
brainstorm other gifts that the mother will think are awesome.

She might change her mind in a year or five, about toy guns. It's
probably worth maintaining the friendship.

-=-For example, if a vegetarian parent, when offered a meatball from a
child, were to say, "No, I don't eat meat. Meat is killing innocent
animals," wouldn't that be a little heavy? -=-

I think so. I think even telling a child "That show is stupid" is too
heavy. I think "That's not music" is a horrible insult, and for kids
who are musical, it can be the first step in a separation between
parent and child, emotionally and psychologically.

There are parents changing their children's lives in uncomfortable
ways to prevent global warming. I think that's on past "a little
heavy" to insanity. Making a child feel responsible for the
destruction of a planet if he wants to play with Silly String, or for
the extinction of a species because he wants a helium balloon is, in
my view of the world, abusive. Illogical and abusive. Building a
warm relationship within which learning can flourish requires first
that the parents try to see where they're being reactionary and
speaking in slogans rather than in their own phrases and thoughts.

-=-I can get that not everyone else is going to embrace gun play, but
I think I need a little help framing the disconnect for my son and for
the other parents. Or maybe not; maybe, like you also mentioned, he's
only 4 1/2, and this will pass soon enough, and telling him that other
people can be uncomfortable with it is enough. -=-

If he ONLY loves toy guns and that's all, then it would be easier to
get new friends. If toy guns are only one thing of many, then help
him see that different people have different favorite things, and
different 'disturbances' and it's polite to do what your guests like
to do, and even more polite not to disturb your hosts.

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Su Penn

On Jul 10, 2010, at 11:42 AM, Ed Wendell wrote:

> I really do love my husband beyond reason - I almost slipped and said I love him to death <BWG> - but wanted to throw out how absurd it can get. Anything can become a murder weapon - even a dog.

I'm a Quaker, and really struggle with not-fitting-in with other Quaker parents. Once at our Yearly Meeting (what it sounds like--an annual gathering of Quakers from a certain region) we were gathering to take the kids to the lake for the afternoon. One boy snapped another boy with a towel, and his father went off on him, towering over him, screaming into his face: "ANYTHING CAN BE A WEAPON! YOU HAVE TO BE MORE PEACEFUL!" Scared the bejeesus out of every kid in the room. He went on and on until a Friend took him by the arm and led him out the door.

I thought the idea that anything can be a weapon was a really scary one to plant in a kid's mind, it was so paranoid. I also thought getting up into a frothing rage and terrifying 20 children over a snapped towel was, as Sandra pointed out up-thread, way more violent than anything those kids were getting up to with their towels and water guns. It was this twisted example of how extreme thinking--in this case, about peace and pacifism--can get all tangled up and lead to the opposite of what you want. In this case, this dad's commitment to peace in the world was a big part of why he didn't have peace in his family. Which is heart-breaking because you can help a family be peaceful much more easily than you can bring peace to the world. He was so caught up in an ideal that he gave up the power he had to influence his little corner of things.

Su
mom to Eric, 9; Carl, 6; Yehva, almost 3
tapeflags.blogspot.com

Sandra Dodd

-=-I have a lot of vegetarian and vegan friends, though, and it would
be OK with me if they said something like, "No, thank you, I don't eat
meat. I'm not comfortable with animals dying so I can eat," or any
other I-statement kind of thing about the choices they've made.
Because that is an opening for discussion that my kids might or might
not be interested in.-=-

I would be unhappy if they did that at the table where my kids were
about to eat.

Their "I" statement at that point is the other side of a thin coin:
"You're comfortable with animals dying so you can eat. Go ahead and
eat. I'm watching."

When we have vegetarian friends come over, we don't make meat. Or we
have an option, if it's a big group, so they'll have a full meal
without meat too.

When we have vegan friends, I make a monkey platter of vegan-
acceptable stuff and figure if they're still hungry when they go home,
they can eat there.

When I was vegetarian, it was for moral reasons. I figured if I could
not, myself, kill a cow and process the meat and deal with the hide
and all, then I had no business having a hamburger. I was caught up
in the Diet for a Small Planet fears of the early 1970's, that assured
people that by the 21st century there would be mass starvation if we
didn't all turn vegetarian RIGHT THEN. And I thought I was too
wimpy to even kill a chicken, so I had no business eating chicken.

During those same two years, though, I was studying archeology and
religion and history and geology and.... I started to see that there
has never, ever been a time in any human culture, EVER, when each
person who ate also had to kill and slaughter animals. Even among
lions, the males don't hunt. They hang out and eat after the females
kill something. They're going to guard, though, and risk their lives
protecting the pregnant females.

In any social group I've been in, any group of ten or twenty people
who end up being friends, I've looked sometimes at who would be the
hunters, if we were isolated and had to revert to "natural" life. No
grocery stores. Create a shelter. In any group of a dozen or so, I
usually see two or three who would be willing to hunt (or trap, or
fish) and be good at it. There are quite a few 5,000 year old
religions on the planet, and I don't think any of them of them are
expressly vegetarian except the Jains. Hindus and Buddhists go by
class and station. Higher classes and religious figured are more
likely to be vegetarian. Monks and nuns, among Catholics, are mostly
likely to be vegetarian.

People in modern cultures can eat meat at every meal. That's not
ideal, and it's not "natural." But never eating meat at all under any
circumstances isn't natural either.

That's too much information to give a little kid, but it's not too
much for parents to be aware that such ideas and evidence exists in
abundance all over the place. There's no one simple "right answer."
There's the whole world, all of history, biology, philosophy and
practicality. Parents who pretend there IS one simple right answer
are not being honest.

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

-=-One boy snapped another boy with a towel, and his father went off
on him, towering over him, screaming into his face: "ANYTHING CAN BE A
WEAPON! YOU HAVE TO BE MORE PEACEFUL!" Scared the bejeesus out of
every kid in the room. He went on and on until a Friend took him by
the arm and led him out the door.-=-

I hope the one who escorted him away pointed out that voices and
posture can be pretty non-peaceful!!

-=- In this case, this dad's commitment to peace in the world was a
big part of why he didn't have peace in his family. Which is heart-
breaking because you can help a family be peaceful much more easily
than you can bring peace to the world. He was so caught up in an ideal
that he gave up the power he had to influence his little corner of
things.-=-

He probably thought he WAS using his power to create more peace in the
world.

Having a peaceful family does add to the peace of the world. Some
adults with young children think they're doing their children a favor
by working to stop wars in foreign lands. Meanwhile, their child is
home alone because the parents are at political rallies. Or the
parents are filling their own heads to the overflow point with images
and details of death and suffering. That's not peace for their child.

People fight. They always have. They probably always will. All the
idealistic kumbaya in the world won't change that. We can choose to
ALL be miserably unhappy because those in warzones are. Some people
do choose that. Some people do want to have fraternity with the most
downtrodden. I think that activity should be reserved to childless
idealists or to those whose own children are grown, not the parents of
young children. I don't get to control that any more than those
people get to control the religious or political thoughts and actions
of people they have never and will never meet. But I can bring that
recommendation here for those who want to create a natural-learning
safe-space for their children.

Sandra




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Su Penn

On Jul 10, 2010, at 1:25 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> No
> grocery stores. Create a shelter. In any group of a dozen or so, I
> usually see two or three who would be willing to hunt (or trap, or
> fish) and be good at it.

My best friend is a Physician's Assistant. She raises poultry for eggs and meat, and she is a skilled carpenter. She also owns a gun and knows how to fire it, and she knows her way around the woods. Oh, she also sews, and can both build a fire and cook over it. Probably if she had to, she could smelt ore ;-)

I joke that if civilization collapses, I'm heading to her place ASAP because she could keep us alive, treat our wounds, feed us, clothe us, build us shelter, and defend us from the zombie gangs.

Su
mom to Eric, 9; Carl, 6; Yehva, almost 3
tapeflags.blogspot.com

Sandra Dodd

-=-She raises poultry for eggs and meat, and she is a skilled
carpenter. She also owns a gun and knows how to fire it, and she knows
her way around the woods. Oh, she also sews, and can both build a fire
and cook over it. Probably if she had to, she could smelt ore ;-)-=-

If she can get that ore smelting thing set up, I can make pottery. I
could probably make cloth if we really needed it. Keith could make
rope and do some cool stuff with it once it was made. :-)

I think we could make musical instruments from wood or bone, too. Or
we could bypass that and just sing to you all!

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sarah

I would recommend 'Killing Monsters' by Gerard Jones (http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Monsters-Children-Make-Believe-Violence/dp/0465036953)

I came to unschooling come via ideas like attachment parenting and from a philosophy of non-violence. In this context I found that the intrinsic violence of 'violent' play was difficult to question and I found the book very helpful in this.

I think also that bringing up boys I didn't want to restrict them to male-violent stereotypes, I wanted them to feel free to nurture and express emotions. That too can lead to trying to suppress 'violent' play - even though it is in no way limited to boys/men and even though it can build and nurture relationships. You don't encourage or enable boys to nurture and love freely by pathologising their desire to make things explode.

I can't remember the book clearly enough to comment on it's general unschooling-friendliness but I think Gerard Jones remembers what it is like to try to play with a grown up and have them react as if you're dangerous.

I have a five year old and a three year old (boys), when Jack hits Charlie with a book that is violence (...anger, frustration, failure of situation-reading on my part), when he points a gun and says 'bang' that is usually play, friendship, social skills and a whole bunch of other great stuff.

Sarah

--- In [email protected], Joyce Fetteroll <jfetteroll@...> wrote:
>
>
> On Jul 10, 2010, at 12:50 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:
>
> > I personaly don't like gun play, I think it's wrong to teach a child
> > that it's [ok] and "fun" to play with a weapon designed for murder.

space_and_freedom

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
> Boys have played with weapons and tools all throughout history.
> Girls too, probably, but it's part of the way a boy learns to be a
> man. If boys are prevented from having wooden or plastic toy
> guns or swords, they'll make them out of lego or tree branches or
> their fingers.

Even if they are not prevented from having guns or swords they will likely make them out of all sorts of things anyway. At least that's how it works in my house. Our son has had all sorts of toy guns over the years, but when he was about 2.5 years I made a list of some of the things he had turned into guns during his short lifetime.

http://crazychicknlady.livejournal.com/17476.html

I came up with over twenty items, including some unlikely things such as a shoe, a can opener, and a pair of lemons.

My girls also like playing with swords and guns, but it has definitely been a stronger passion in my son.

BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

Just today, on a fellow unschooler facebook wall, another unschooling mom made a
very strong
  comment against a book series.
I asked why was she so against it. She went on and on. She never read the books
or seen the movies about it
but she was " against " them. Her own words.
I did not know she was an unschooling mom at that point and was surprised to
find out later that she was.
Of course she has the right  not to like them. People like different things.
What if one of her kids would read them in the future and love them?
Would they feel wrong for enjoying something their mother  is "against"?


Last week my niece flew in from NC and me and Gigi, my 4 year old , went to pick
her and her boyfriend up.
Gigi loves her and was really happy to see her.
Gigi asked her if she liked McDonalds.
My niece , who was not unschooled and is a history teacher, said "Ewwww, it is
horrible and really bad for you, yuck."
She then, went on and on how it was "disgusting" and bad for your health, yadda
yadda.
She could have said: " No I don;'t like it."
That would have been enough.
 Why make a person, in this case, a 4 year old, feel like they are wrong 
because they like something you don't.
She could have even said she does not like it because the food is not as fresh,
or they use some things she does not thing are healthy.
But "EWWWWWW" and "yuck" and  going on and on how it is bad and poison for your
body???

I used to be the very opinionated person who did those things. Even not long
ago!
But I have come a long way to accept and respect people's different likes and
dislikes.
I was the mom , who when my son was a baby, thought video games were silly and a
waste.
Fast forward and today I am the one playing and supporting my son's video game 
passion.

 
Alex Polikowsky

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]