Re: [Unschooling-dotcom] GUNS, regions, human nature
[email protected]
<< there are only 2 people
in my personal environment who i relate to on parenting issues, and they're
anti gun. >>
Brenda,
Part of it is probably regional and cultural as well. My parents and all my
grandparents were rural Texans. I grew up in northern New Mexico (where all
the bears are coming into people's yards and kitchens this season). Both my
parents hunted every year and we ate the meat. They were hunter safety
instructors for kids.
I never had a personal interest in guns, but I also *know* (not kinda think)
that playing with guns does not make a child violent. In fact (not theory)
it is my direct and long experience that the most acting out and desperate
kid behavior seems to come from being ignored by parents or over-controlled
by them. Kids whose parents tell them everything to do and how and when tend
to do and be all those forbidden things when thd parents aren't around. I've
seen it repeatedly in schools, with friends and relatives, in large-kid
gatherings and small overnighters.
On the other hand, if I were of several generations of Jewish parentage and
lived in an apartment in Manhattan, I am assured by my friend Jack Goldman
that I would HATE guns and totally forbid anything like a gun. (And when
Jack moved to Arizona as soon as he could, and bought a handgun and learned
to shoot it, that could have been a good secret if he 1) hadn't left the
receipt in his backpack when he visited his mom and 2) if his mom hadn't been
such that she went through the backpack of a son who was about 24 and had
just finished a Master's Degree in physics. So she flipped out over a
receipt for a gun.
If I were a German-surnamed Lutheran whose ancestors had been in Philadelphia
for three hundred years and my mom lived next door, I would be unlikely to
buy my son a cowboy outfit and cap pistols.
One size doesn't fit all in the U.S.; one U.S. size doesn't fit Canada,
England, South Africa, Japan or Australia [are there others on this list? :-)
]
But the idea that forbidding something makes it disappear from the outside
world or forbidding something banishes it from our child's thoughts and
awareness is an invalid idea. Something totally forbidden becomes a major
factor in a child's life. Families who ban any mention of evolution and who
are derisive of any "idiot" who could possibly think it had validity are
raising kids much more likely to read Darwin than kids who were presented
that as something lots of people believe and creationism as something lots of
Christians believe because of the Bible. And when the kids are exposed to it
and might not think one would have to be an idiot to see the potential and
the evidence, their faith in their parents is going to erode a little bit.
There is a world of difference out there. At one end might be a paranoid
family that bases their choice of housing, car and fence wire on a paranoid
fear of the government teaching all their children to recognize uniforms of
different law enforcement agencies, teaching their children what their rights
are about letting FBI agents on the land or in the house, and then teaches
them to shoot guns and makes them keep loaded guns by each door.
(Undoubtedly they're homeschoolers.) At the other end of the
kid-has-touched-a-gun scale is a kid like mine, who has a thrift store cap
pistol, somewhere; a pirate pistol from Disneyland; a kinda star-trek
phaser-like noise-box, a super soaker (broken), and no fascination with guns.
Then there seem to be some families who forbid guns altogether and don't
distinguish between the two examples above.
Sandra
Sandra
"Everything counts."
http://expage.com/SandraDoddArticles
http://expage.com/SandraDodd
in my personal environment who i relate to on parenting issues, and they're
anti gun. >>
Brenda,
Part of it is probably regional and cultural as well. My parents and all my
grandparents were rural Texans. I grew up in northern New Mexico (where all
the bears are coming into people's yards and kitchens this season). Both my
parents hunted every year and we ate the meat. They were hunter safety
instructors for kids.
I never had a personal interest in guns, but I also *know* (not kinda think)
that playing with guns does not make a child violent. In fact (not theory)
it is my direct and long experience that the most acting out and desperate
kid behavior seems to come from being ignored by parents or over-controlled
by them. Kids whose parents tell them everything to do and how and when tend
to do and be all those forbidden things when thd parents aren't around. I've
seen it repeatedly in schools, with friends and relatives, in large-kid
gatherings and small overnighters.
On the other hand, if I were of several generations of Jewish parentage and
lived in an apartment in Manhattan, I am assured by my friend Jack Goldman
that I would HATE guns and totally forbid anything like a gun. (And when
Jack moved to Arizona as soon as he could, and bought a handgun and learned
to shoot it, that could have been a good secret if he 1) hadn't left the
receipt in his backpack when he visited his mom and 2) if his mom hadn't been
such that she went through the backpack of a son who was about 24 and had
just finished a Master's Degree in physics. So she flipped out over a
receipt for a gun.
If I were a German-surnamed Lutheran whose ancestors had been in Philadelphia
for three hundred years and my mom lived next door, I would be unlikely to
buy my son a cowboy outfit and cap pistols.
One size doesn't fit all in the U.S.; one U.S. size doesn't fit Canada,
England, South Africa, Japan or Australia [are there others on this list? :-)
]
But the idea that forbidding something makes it disappear from the outside
world or forbidding something banishes it from our child's thoughts and
awareness is an invalid idea. Something totally forbidden becomes a major
factor in a child's life. Families who ban any mention of evolution and who
are derisive of any "idiot" who could possibly think it had validity are
raising kids much more likely to read Darwin than kids who were presented
that as something lots of people believe and creationism as something lots of
Christians believe because of the Bible. And when the kids are exposed to it
and might not think one would have to be an idiot to see the potential and
the evidence, their faith in their parents is going to erode a little bit.
There is a world of difference out there. At one end might be a paranoid
family that bases their choice of housing, car and fence wire on a paranoid
fear of the government teaching all their children to recognize uniforms of
different law enforcement agencies, teaching their children what their rights
are about letting FBI agents on the land or in the house, and then teaches
them to shoot guns and makes them keep loaded guns by each door.
(Undoubtedly they're homeschoolers.) At the other end of the
kid-has-touched-a-gun scale is a kid like mine, who has a thrift store cap
pistol, somewhere; a pirate pistol from Disneyland; a kinda star-trek
phaser-like noise-box, a super soaker (broken), and no fascination with guns.
Then there seem to be some families who forbid guns altogether and don't
distinguish between the two examples above.
Sandra
Sandra
"Everything counts."
http://expage.com/SandraDoddArticles
http://expage.com/SandraDodd
[email protected]
In a message dated 9/2/01 7:06:45 AM, SandraDodd@... writes:
<< But the idea that forbidding something makes it disappear from the outside
world or forbidding something banishes it from our child's thoughts and
awareness is an invalid idea. Something totally forbidden becomes a major
factor in a child's life. >>
Right. My Quaker friend's son was forbidden to play with guns so he handled
the problem by holding his beloved stuffed bunny wabbit like a rifle (on
it's side, ears extended in front, legs behind) and supplying the sound
effects. Worked for him...
Valerie
<< But the idea that forbidding something makes it disappear from the outside
world or forbidding something banishes it from our child's thoughts and
awareness is an invalid idea. Something totally forbidden becomes a major
factor in a child's life. >>
Right. My Quaker friend's son was forbidden to play with guns so he handled
the problem by holding his beloved stuffed bunny wabbit like a rifle (on
it's side, ears extended in front, legs behind) and supplying the sound
effects. Worked for him...
Valerie