Our cute neighbor boys like to play with guns. They run hard and play what looks to me like random war games: run, chase, duck, feint, serpentine, . . . rinse and repeat. From what I can tell, there is no talking required. They could be deaf and dumb without hampering the game at all.
I don't actually have toy guns--not out of any principle, just lack of interest. But Jonathan has shown the girls how anything with a right angle can be a firearm. Grab the short end and the long end transforms into a gunbarrel: K'Nex, legos, even a Barbie--bent at the waist, she's Napolean's double barrel pistol.
Today, this happened with a tabletop easel.
My easel broke in half at the hinges, making (if you're hugely creative) a perfectly matched set of handguns. Eden brought Alice into the entry for gunplay. Here's the conversation I overheard:
EDEN: "Alice, YOU stand here. . . . I'LL stand here," (3 feet apart, facing each other). "Now, you shoot me, and I shoot you." [Seriously, this had to be discussed.]So goes the warfare of little girls. Aren't girls great?
ALICE: "No, I shoot!" [This makes no sense: she's two and just needs to say 'no'.]
EDEN: "Ready, go! . . . pieou, pieou . . . pieou, pieou, . . . pieou!" [These are little girl gun sounds.]
"Now, we put our guns down and do 'Ring around the Rosies'."
[Begin rosies and posies, end gun play.]
. . . and when the Huns show up at the border, I think I prefer the warfare of little boys. Boys are great, too!
Whatever you do, don't try to tell me it's environmental! Jonathan made his first Barbie-gun when he was two years old, back when I didn't allow guns of any kind in the house. Nice try, Mom.
3 comments:
It's for sure not environmental. I witnessed that with Ray.
Poor Audrey has the rule never shoot people, or it's timeout and guns taken away. Many timeouts and revoked guns happen daily at our house. They just can't help themselves. It is a little unnerving to glance over and see a gun aimed at me over the top of the couch.
Proof: my manly-man son Brad, who gets giddy at the thought of field dressing ANY type of dead animal, spent the good part of his toddler years clutching a pink straw hat...I think he even slept with it. I remind him of it from time to time and he gives me a very ugly look [refer to field-dressing comment].
It is NOT environmental...
My son is MUCH better with sound effects than he is talking. And I love the visual of a "double barrel" gun.
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