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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| I Never Thought My Son Would Play With Guns |
| 2014-01-15 |
| Before you ask, fellas, she's taken. I woke up this morning to my nearly 5-year-old son, his big blue eyes close to mine, saying "Mama! Let's play!" Somehow, I dragged myself to the living room where he had set up dinosaurs. He told me the rules: "My dinosaurs have superpowers and yours don't. Mine find yours and then kill them with their power!" That woke me up. Please, go back to sleep. I wondered if I should say something to him about killing -- again. I tried to redirect the violence in the play by having my dinosaurs offer friendship and joint living in a cave. He didn't bite. "No! they are not friends! OK mama? OK?" "OK," I said, in resignation. Because at that moment, it felt like I had lost that battle. You didn't even fight a battle. You gave in. No rules lawyering, as he may have expected. You just took it. And the message is clear: he has to take it, too. What happened to my gentle little boy who would cradle his dolls if they happened to fall on the ground? Where is the boy who would never consider the possibility of intentionally hurting another? And where did this one, who pretends to shoot others, come from? "My son will never do that," I used to say. His cajones are dropping, mom. As usual, parenting is humbling. Guns first showed up last year. Amidst his love affair with Mary Poppins and Annie, he also started asking about weapons. He wanted me to cut a gun out of cardboard so he could take it to school. Mortified, I imagined his teachers' reactions when they saw it. Mary Poppins? Really? Maybe his newfound love of guns was his way of saying he was growing up -- and away -- from you. We talked about how guns are best used for protection, only by those whose job it is to protect -- the police, the army. I told myself that he was interested in guns in the same way he was interested in a policeman's pad, handcuffs and hat -- fun tools of the trade. Protection, right? Cops will be there for you in case of danger; there's just a little five to 15 minute lag between danger becoming apparent and the arrival of the "cavalry". Eventually, he didn't accept my explanation and started asking questions I didn't have the answers to. And they were questions that I ask myself all the time. Why would we need protection? From whom? Does protecting mean hurting someone else? Yes, it does. Just a guess, you still haven't told him. My advice: give him extra lunch money coz in a few years, it'll be feeding at least one tormentor of your son. As a therapist, I am fully aware of a child's need to use play as a way to experience anxiety in a non-threatening situation. Through play, children can express what they find confusing, exciting and overwhelming about the world. All that education and you haven't the first clue about kids playing: It doesn't matter! As a mom, it's not that simple. A therapist is trained to put her own issues aside, or to use them in a way that will benefit the patient. But as a mom, my ego is wrapped up in my son. His behavior often feels like a reflection of who I am and how I am perceived. I know this feeling is detrimental, but it is sometimes hard to shake. My own associations to guns and violence are not the same as my son's. At just the mention of guns, I feel a wave of sadness and despondence. I think about school shootings, accidental shootings in homes with guns, and wars. Sadness. But then you get over it and your inner fascist takes over, and you support violence to take guns from individuals who have the right to them takes over. You're dishonest and a hypocrite. My son's interest in guns has to do with his developmental stage as a kid and as a boy. He is becoming more aware of his own agency. He experiments with being defiant. "You are not a good mama!" he says, when he is upset at me. "I hate this food!" he says, about dishes he loved a day earlier. Then he looks up at me with red cheeks to see if he has crossed the line, wanting to make sure that there is indeed a line. Kids test limits. All kids do that. Yours is not so unusual, your advanced education notwithstanding.. He divides the world into black/white, good/bad, yes/no, perhaps as a way to simplify a world that he is beginning to sense is not so simple. You mistake is in thinking because a kid divides the world into black and white, he is suddenly unable to distinguish the shades between. Thought you were a psychologist. He is becoming more aware of those around him and how their actions reflect on him. He sees fellow students who are older and more competent than he is in certain areas and feels disempowered, just by their presence. That's why he loves superheroes. Playing games with a clear bad guy to defeat --and a clear good guy who usually has a little extra power born out of goodness -- makes him feel safe again. I get that. It is the preoccupation with weapons and violence that stops me in my tracks. I struggle with whether his play stems from the desire to HURT another, or OVERPOWER another. A little extra power, or a little extra ammunition. And you still don't get it. So, what do I do? Starting drinking, very heavily. When I can I play with him, hoping that if he acts out the dynamics of good and bad, powerful and weak, healthy and injured, he is releasing some of his anxiety. He's kid. He's playing whether he is anxious or not, and that play prolly has nothing to do with how he feels at the moment. On some days I allow him to defeat me with his powerful dinosaurs. I let him make up the rules and I pretend to be scared of his strength. He becomes exhilarated and later seems to be much better company during the dinner/bath marathon. I allowed my daughter to defeat me in wargaming, but then I sucked at wargaming, but that is beside the point. :oP You should be making him aware he just can't make up the rules as he goes along. He won't be doing that as an adult, unless his name miraculously becomes Barak Obama. On other days I fight back, unable to put my own sense of powerlessness aside. My army people find a place to hide, my dinosaurs demonstrate their own strength and I try to outsmart him (we all know it is impossible to outsmart a kid). I think your kid is already aware that 90 percent of wargaming is won or lost before the game even begins, in the ground rules. On my worst days I freeze up. He mentions guns and I wonder where I went wrong. I feel as though the future is bleak and full of pain and war, and I couldn't do anything to help, not even raise a mensch. In those moments, I don't allow him to be him. I talk to him about the difference between play and real life. I tell him that, in real life, guns and weapons can hurt people to the point of death. We talk about what it means not to be living anymore. Shorter: You ruined his game play. This afternoon we sat down to play again. I was prepared to let him express his every desire and overpower me in whatever way he chose, even if it scared me. This time, he told me that our dinosaurs were cleaning up with sponges connected to the bottom of their feet. No violence, no drama. I was ridiculously disappointed, because for a moment, I thought I had figured out a tiny little aspect of parenting my son. And then the doozy hit at dinner. What does he want for his fifth birthday? A light saber! Lego Chima! Sword! Stay calm. He needs to play it out to understand it, and he needs to play with someone he feels safe with. Mom's a pushover, so let's go with that. Little does he know that this playing partner is still trying to work it all out herself, and sometimes feels just as terrified and confused as he does. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #30 In spite of her best efforts, little Johnny will grow up to be a man. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2014-01-15 22:59 |
| #29 I'd heard folks that many shrinks start off with that major in college hoping to understand themselves better. So start broken and learn to fix and then fix others except what if they can't fix themselves? Then they write for Huffpo I guess. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2014-01-15 21:02 |
| #28 You ever notice that the ones who gravitate towards the mental medical arts are usually a bit looney... Just my opinion... No - working in my current position for the past 7+ years, I find that it's moderately accurate. I call it "qualification". |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-01-15 20:51 |
| #27 This broad's a therapist? Yikes... Also the Fort Hood massacre shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. |
| Posted by: Omavising Ebbemp9815 2014-01-15 19:06 |
| #26 This broad's a therapist? Yikes... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2014-01-15 18:45 |
| #25 You're an idiot, he wanted to win, so he set the rules, they wern't your rules, so you lost, now you're moaning about it. You have NO business raising a child, I'd take him away and let him grow up normally. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2014-01-15 17:33 |
| #24 Good for you JFM. There is hope. This article strikes me as another "neutering" of America article. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-01-15 14:26 |
| #23 JFM, you must feels as out-of-place in France as I do when I have to go to San Francisco. We need to figure out how you were cured of European-ness and apply that antidote to the rest of Europe and the urban US. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2014-01-15 13:24 |
| #22 He divides the world into black/white, good/bad, yes/no, perhaps as a way to simplify a world that he is beginning to sense is not so simple. I worked with troubled teen-agers at one point in my life. One day, one of the kids I was working with brought a gun to the center and threatened me. He told me what he was going to do to me if I continued talking with his parents. The world, all of a sudden got black and white and had a great deal of clarity. I read where the kid later died in a prison killing. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-01-15 11:51 |
| #21 HuffPo author trying to make her way to Salon, apparently |
| Posted by: Frank G 2014-01-15 11:02 |
| #20 Follup to #16 I am now a knuckle dragging, Bible thumping, gun toting French red neck. :-) |
| Posted by: JFM 2014-01-15 10:52 |
| #19 Reminds me of a man I talked to who said, "I don't need a firearm. If someone tries to get in my house I'm not taking the law into my own hands but dialing 911. After, I pay my taxes so the police can protect me". I asked him if he was familiar with the Supreme Court decision that declared a citizen has no inherent right to be protected by the police. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2014-01-15 10:34 |
| #18 A Georgia deer however, believe it or not. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-01-15 10:13 |
| #17 No, not mine. No luck for me this year. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-01-15 10:11 |
| #16 We talked about how guns are best used for protection, only by those whose job it is to protect -- the police, the army. Like about most Europeans I was anti-gun. And one day I read an American liberal proudly saying: "If you try to harm my children you will see how fast I am for calling the police". Whaaaaaaaaat? if you try to harm my children I will kill you and the only reason I am going to call the police is because the bad guy could prevail on me. And I am certainly unwilling to ask police officers to risk their lives in order to save my shildren all while I hide under the bed like that American liberal was apparently planning to do. Since then I have become a firm partisan of Second Amendment. |
| Posted by: JFM 2014-01-15 10:10 |
| #15 BTW, Besoeker, that deer in #4 - one of yours, or somebody you know? That's quite a whitetail. I'd be smiling a lot bigger than that young guy in the pic. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2014-01-15 09:43 |
| #14 Sounds like junior's toys are stored in mom's basket case. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2014-01-15 09:22 |
| #13 #12 - Liberal thought, AKA magical thinking - in a nutshell: "I know what I want the answers to be..." |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2014-01-15 09:21 |
| #12 Ah. THERE is the problem. Eventually, he didn't accept my explanation and started asking questions I didn't have the answers to. And they were questions that I ask myself all the time. There you go: you admit you ask the questions, you admit you don't know the answers, then propose "solutions" that imply that you DO know the answers. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2014-01-15 08:52 |
| #11 Isn't the modern artificial urban bubble wonderful? I mean to be able to ignore 4000 years of recorded human history and live in practically the Disney World of human experience all attained by ignoring the thin line provided by the curtains of a very elaborate arrangement of technology and social organization that disappears in hours from a Katrina or Sandy. Si vis pacem, para bellum. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-01-15 08:17 |
| #10 Sounds like she wants him to be a girl. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2014-01-15 07:14 |
| #9 There is always a promising career in the US Marine Corps. No, seriously. You get promoted for being knowledgable and efficient with weapons. And if you are the one in six who gets a kill count you might be given your own Platoon and who knows where that might lead....Regiment or above someday. "Mama, let's play !" Teach him about flanking and double envelopments and the difference between A and L ambushes. Find 'em, Fix 'em, Fight 'em, and Finish 'em. |
| Posted by: Spereting Tingle4064 2014-01-15 06:32 |
| #8 Alright, alright.....so HE isn't the daddy. |
| Posted by: pikestaff 2014-01-15 06:27 |
| #7 Previous comment was mine. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2014-01-15 06:06 |
| #6 I dated one of these. Dated. Didn't marry. Pay attention, ladies. |
| Posted by: no no uro 2014-01-15 06:05 |
| #5 You ever notice that the ones who gravitate towards the mental medical arts are usually a bit looney. I think they gravitate to this profession because they're trying to understand themselves thru others. Just my opinion... |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2014-01-15 04:59 |
| #4 Alright, alright.....so that isn't the daddy. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-01-15 04:52 |
| #3 Any bets, with mom like this, on how long until he's on Ritalin? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-01-15 02:13 |
| #2 She's married. |
| Posted by: badanov 2014-01-15 01:16 |
| #1 No mention of a Daddy in the picture.... |
| Posted by: tipover 2014-01-15 00:53 |