When Alex was born, we decided that we would not allow toy weapons in our house. Despite our best efforts, he made all kinds of things into weapons, from chewing his toast into an L shape to taking a puzzle piece shaped like Florida from a map of the US and turning it sideways. The irony there does not escape me. We kept away from TV shows and games with gunplay in them, but there was something so attractive to him about mortal combat that it seemed to be hard-wired into his brain. We relented and allowed him to have a wooden sword that we purchased on a trip to Scotland. Then there was a Star Wars lightsaber; then a knight's helmet and plastic shield. We entered the slippery slope of war toys and battle play, and kept right on sliding.
One of the moms in our preschool class a few years ago told a story about how her 3 year old daughter found a water gun on the playground. Before her mom could even react, the girl held the gun to her head and started making a whirring sound. She thought it was a blowdryer.
We visited Lincoln's Birthplace in Kentucky at Christmas time, and Alex had his allowance money with him. He chose a bag of plastic Civil War soldiers as his souvenir. He asked me who won the war, the blue team or the gray team? I told him the blue team won, which led to a discussion of slavery, which led to a discussion of North versus South. He was incredulous that people actually thought that it was acceptable to own another person. He chose to be on the blue team and from then on, the gray team was called "the enemy."
When Alex was four, I became somewhat disturbed by Alex's desire to act out fights and battles and be the superhero who swoops in to save the day. No amount of redirection or attempts at arts and crafts seemed to quell his desire to be a hero. I talked to one of his pre-school teachers about it and asked for advice on what to do. The teacher told me that "Superhero play is the way that children, boys in particular, feel that they have some control in their worlds. They are small and they know it, so by fantasizing and acting out the role play of superhero rescuing others, they feel stronger and learn to cope with conflict. We try to rechannel that to having them develop scenarios where they are helpers, like firemen, and then they take turns being the rescued."
I still worry sometimes about Alex's fantasies of war and the stuffed animals he lines up for battle, with a shout of "For Narnia!" as he races across the room, helmet on and sword held high. I loved the Narnia books as a child, and it somehow didn't occur to me that there were battles in them when we took him to see the movie version. The story I remembered was one of fantasy and good versus evil, of talking animals and mythical creatures.
When I start to worry about Alex's desire to play war games, I remember that my younger brothers had GI Joes, BB guns, and swords. They fought imaginary pirate battles in their treehouse and went on Indian raids with the neighborhood boys. They wrestled each other and learned karate. They turned out to be peaceful, loving men.
My husband spent the better part of his seventh year of life wearing a Batman costume and fighting imaginary crime nearly 24 hours a day, wearing a costume that he made himself and even teaching himself how to sew when his mother refused. He turned out to someone who marches against war, and takes his son along for the experience of voicing dissent.
So maybe all this worry is all for naught, and Alex will somehow, by being a Jedi knight or a Union soldier, figure out right from wrong, and that conflicts are rarely ever resolved by force. He's a smart, loving boy. He'll figure it out. I think that somehow he has the right idea.
Maybe someday he'll know what his Grandpa spent his scholarly career learning: that lasting peace is born of understanding, not through death and destruction. Maybe I shouldn't worry so much about his wanting to play with weapons and just let it be.
Maybe my role in this will be to introduce him to the warriors for peace, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., The Dalai Lama and William Sloan Coffin, Jr., and even his Grandpa Jim. Maybe, just maybe, the world will be a little better for it.
