Gun play

[theatokos]

This is a post for all those born male and for mothers of males.

If you are a male, did you play with guns? Did you turn non-gun items into imaginary guns? Do you think this is something innate in males? If not, where did you learn this behaviour from? As an adult male now do you have any parenting perspectives on this, or advice for the new mama of a male?

For mothers of males, do your sons play with guns or have gun play? If so, at what age did this start? Does this bother you? If so, how do you discourage this? Any thoughts for a new mama?

Comments

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

i wasnt a boy but i made my own guns out of anything i could find. i was a gun nut.
kate is already doing it.
it has nothing to do with sex.

[raving-liberal.livejournal.com]

Agreed. We made bows and arrows out of everything and enacted some pretty bloody battle scenes!

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

i was a fencer in school so i used dolls (barbie types) and made them into things to fence with... they were my foils when I wasnt in school.

i also repeatedly killed the dolls with my pointers as guns. i was a murderous child.

i would also perform surgeries on things trying to save them...

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

oh and i never watched tv when i was younger. i didnt watch tv until i was over 10 years old.. by then i had done by share of killing legions of people.

[erinya.livejournal.com]

Neither did I! I got all my ideas from books...

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

so did i.

my imagination was insane...

[raving-liberal.livejournal.com]

We were PBS only kids (my mom was ubercrunch), though we read a lot of Narnia and the Hobbit type stuff. Lots of swords, arrows, spears, etc. My brother, however, was way into guns. At 18 months old, having a) never seen a real gun (my parents didn't own them) and b) having never been around gun owners, picked a stick up in the yard, pointed it at the sky, and said, "Pew! Bird dead." I think some of this stuff is hard-wired -- like baby animals play fighting.

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

i am sure your brother grew up to be a serial killer too. As we speak I am writing this from the federal pen for a clock tower incident.

[raving-liberal.livejournal.com]

He's actually all but finished his application process to become an FBI field agent. He failed the PT test the first time due to being 7 seconds too slow on his sprint -- because of pneumonia! He's currently a successful Cisco systems engineer w/ a degree from GA Tech. ;)

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

obviously a failure.

[raving-liberal.livejournal.com]

He also became a homeowner at 23. The violence inherent in the system totally wrecked him. ;)

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

I can see that. Thats the way it usually works. :p

[raving-liberal.livejournal.com]

He was the "good" one, though. We all think he was born in his mid-50s.

[erinya.livejournal.com]

I wasn't a big gun girl but oh man did I love my swords. Plastic or improvised. Am non-violent today, possibly to a fault.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

No, maybe I shouldn't have limited it to just males, but they do tend to be the more "gun prone" and according to Adam and my nanny, there is more pressure to engage in that kind of play.

However, I was quite the violent little girl. I looooooved to hit and hit with things.