JD really really really wanted to go to Target to spend his allowance. For the past couple days he has been asking to go but we have been busy. Last night Daddy took JD to Academy and Target.
When they got home Daddy said:
It's better you didn't go with us. The whole time at Academy I had to tell him, "No son, you're to young for that gun." Or "No son, Mommy would kill me if i brought that home." Then at Target it was, "No son, you don't have enough money for that toy." I tried to tell him that we could go home and he could do some extra chores for money but he started to almost hyperventilate. We went through alot of toys and this is what he picked out.
JD came home with a neon blue and orange gun that shoots little foam bullets. JD is really into guns right now. Daddy and I are both doing the best we can to be reasonable in letting him play the way boys play but also be sure that he understands that guns are not toys. I've even taking to calling them pretend guns instead of toy guns. We' ve been talking about how to tell the difference between a pretend gun and a real gun and what to do if you find a real gun.
At special talk time last night JD said he wants to be 5 things when he grows up: a knight, a dragon, a cookie, a soldier and a farmer.
3 comments:
I grew up around guns, and learned most of my gun safety at home. I don't remember if this was a school program or at BREC summer camp, but this song still gets stuck in my head sometimes.
J might like it because it's a cartoon, and it has a little sing-song chant about what to do if you find a gun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIEBrb_wRYc
We haven't had the issue of guns here yet...so I don't know how I will react. I think about it often and how I was raised around guns. My dad is a gunsmith. My first "job" was at an outdoor shooting range, setting up targets. I know that there was not nearly the violence on TV with guns that there is now, then it was Cowboys and Indians and I had a toy gun belt with a pistol in a holster on both hips. I'm sure we never had conversations about what to do if we found a real gun - there was no need, we saw real guns all the time and we knew the difference. We were taught, these are toys and these are not. My dad had a gun closet where he kept some of his guns, but there was always a loaded revolver on his desk and several others in plain sight/just out of plain sight with him/in our home at all times. We didn't dare touch them unless we were given permission - which we were at a very young age. My dad had me shooting at a shooting range when I was 5 years old, I can't begin to tell you how many times I had been there with him before he let me shoot, and I was helping reload bullets long before then. I guess because we were around guns all the time, we learned a respect for them without the hypothetical conversations that so many parents have to have. It is not the same in our home, there are guns, but they are not out all the time and they are not the common household items that they were in my parent's home when I was growing up. Although, my daddy's loaded revolver is still on his desk and my son is on his way to learning about guns on the 2 days at week that he spends at Paw-Paw's house....
We had a little gun class with his cousin this morning. Daddy brought out our gun and let the boys touch and hold it. Then they compared it to the pretend guns: real guns are heavy and made of metal; pretend guns are lighter, usually made of plastic or wood, and have an orange tip.
Then we watched the Eddie Eagle NRA video on youtube. (thanks robyn)
We also stress not pointing guns (even toy guns) at people and we only shoot animals we are going to eat.
the main problem is that a lot of toy guns LOOK real. if all toy guns looked like toys, gun safety would be much easier at this age.
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