Boys and Gun Play

It is normal. Boys will make a gun out of a slice of pizza, I swear! I wouldn't worry so much about it. If you try to get rid of their version of cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians, which is "yesteryear's" gun play, they will just hide it from you and, yes, make guns out of pizza slices...

Dawn

Personally, I think you are fighting a losing battle. I remember my 3rd son CRAWLING making gun noises. My bro and I played guns and army constantly, and he is the least violent person I have ever met. He doesn't own a gun and hasn't even shot one before (he's 35 now).

Here's the thing, your son is wired this way. If you never buy him a toy gun he will, as he has already shown you, make his fingers into one. Stinkers! :D They tried to give girls and boys the same kinds of toys in the 70's because they assumed that boys did violent play because those were the kinds of toys they were given and they assumed that girls play house because they are given dolls and kitchen toys. They were surprised to find that the boys naturally gravitated toward the guns and trucks and the girls toward the dolls and tea sets regardless of influence. More recently they have made a lot of discoveries about the differences between the male and female brain. Boys brains are literally wired differently than girls and they are going to shoot stuff and stab and kick stuff. It's how they get out their energy and aggression. If you try to stop it you are going against the grain of who he has been made to be and also stopping him from getting out his aggression in innocent ways. This kind of play will not translate into bullying or violence in real life. Instead of inhibiting normal boy play or seeing it as him being overly aggressive look at it this way: He is a male and it is in his nature to protect those he loves. He's a knight in training! :D Pretend he's a super hero and let him save you. Also, just because this is his preferred method of play doesn't mean you can't still teach him good conflict resolution skills to use in disagreements with other kids. And if you give this a lot of negative attention you can expect it to get much more pronounced. Ignore it. Besides, your hubby says he did it right? You married him so he must have turned out pretty well! Honestly, he'll be fine.
Blessings!
BTW: I understand not wanting your kid to have realistic looking guns and being worried about them being desensitized to violence by movies but I think water pistols and toy swords are pretty harmless.

Boys come out of the womb with their hands in the shape of a gun and shooting. It's what they do. I think we have to be careful to teach them to think properly about guns (we don't shoot people except to protect our family or in a war situation). We also have to be careful not to feminize our boys and expect them to behave like girls (sitting quietly). Boys are boys and will do boy things. That doesn't mean that they can't play house and be the Daddy. But, we can't expect them to sit quietly with stuffed animals and have a tea party. Now, they might go hunting and shoot those stuffed animals... ;)

My son "shot" my daughter with her own teddy bear. He is 5 and she is 4. It is normal and they will outgrow it. I don't make a bigger deal out of than I need to and we don't have toy guns in the house with the exception of super soakers.

So, basically, we don't stop it perse, but we don't encourage it. We might redirect time to time just to keep it from going from imagination to fixation. Little boys don't really shoot people just like little girls aren't really flying faries. It's pretend and totally, totally normal.

I joined in, myself.

I've always made it very clear that there is a difference between real and pretend (not just the wrestling v hurting people/fighting, toy swords v read blades -aka kitchen knives, bows and arrows v bows and arrows, toy or imaginary guns/bombs/grenades/ and real ones, etc. but also cartoons/movies/etc. and real life.... we made a point to watch the "behind the scenes" stuff on action flicks whenever possible).

This worked REALLY well in anger management / emotional regulation. There is a BIG difference (and kids know it/are taught) that yelling because someone is far away or yelling in anger are 2 different things. Jumping for fun v stomping in anger. Bumping someone in 'Hello' v shoving someone in anger. Doing something EVERYONE thinks is fun v doing something ONE person thinks is fun, and the other person is upset over.

AKA real pretend vs threats. Play v hurting people. Control v lack of control.

To ME, this kind of imaginary play is part of the beginning of laying boundaries for accepted behavior. It's a way to act out things that are right (stopping the bad guy) and things that are wrong (being the bad guy). It's experimenting and figuring out what is right and wrong, in a way that is fun instead of serious. Don't get me wrong, seriousness has it's place, I've just personally found that lessons stick better when there is a good balance. If my son wants to be the evil despot taking over the world (aka the section of woods we have to be in), he's ALSO thinking of ways that people will be trying to stop him (and that, as a matter of course he accepts that people ARE trying to stop him is pretty huge). And then, of course, we switch sides and HE'S the hero. Or we're both on the same team. (Which brings teamwork into play).

Anyhow... I think it's great. But that's just my opinion.

I think it's more of a point and shoot, hit the target kind of excitement that makes little boys love gun play.
Can you remember shooting your friends with water guns when you were little? Or nerf darts? Or throwing water balloons/bombs at each other? Or pelting each other with snowballs? It IS fun!
My son has also loved video games (some of them pretty violent shooting and killing games) for many years but the only thing he points and shoots in real life is a camera.
Don't worry too much about it momma, it's just play :)

well i am of the opinion that shielding them from every cartoon and movie that has "guns" in it is going overboard - i don't think that kids should be shielded from EVERYthing that isn't necessarily "right" or "nice". otherwise how do they know the difference?

my son LOVES LOVES LOVES star wars. and transformers. both have plenty of "pew pew pew!" in them.

his school does not allow weapon play of any kind. they can't bring anything with a weapon for show-and-tell, even their halloween costumes must have no weapons. and when he's at school he follows their rules just fine.

we enforce at home, no shooting people or animals. he can shoot "pretend bad guys" and leaves and rocks and sticks all day long. but not his friends, not his pets, and not his parents (or anyone else). he also follows this rule just fine.

it has worked for us.

and i'm sorry but blaming boys playing guns on a billboard is just ridiculous. first off how do they know what they are? they must have seen tv show or a movie or their big brothers actually using toy guns (or pretend guns) first otherwise it's just two guys holding two long metal things. S., it doesn't matter where it came from. YES it's totally natural for boys to want to play guns.

what's important is teaching them appropriate guidelines. if no gun play is your decision that's fine. but don't think that whether or not they watch star wars is going to determine whether they want to or not. they'll want to regardless. it's up to us as parents to teach them the proper way to act on that "want".

I had two boys, and they both did this. The girls did, too, for a while. I was uncomfortable with having toy guns (not to mention real ones) in the house. But when they started making imaginary guns out of bendable plastic straws, I let them.

(When they were older, somebody gave them wooden swords. They had rules about not using them in the house or on other living things, and then they had a good summer trying to learn swordplay.)

Your boys are making believe. They have no idea what it's really about and how violent the real thing would be. It's just fun to run around, point something at your brother, and have him make a groaning noise and topple over on the sofa. Mine phased out of it as they grew older.

It seems like all boys do it at some point or another.
Mine would use fingers or make gun shapes out of Legos.
Saying 'don't do that' doesn't quench the curiosity.
Our son lost his curiosity about guns when my husband taught him to target shoot at the range when he was 6 yrs old.
He learned all the safety rules and to this day he can recite them on demand.
He's a pretty good shot - better than me, but once he found out what it's all about, he stopped playing 'shoot em up' for good.
Just wait till your kids are older and they get an invite to a birthday party at a laser tag place.
My husband, who's really into target shooting, is philosophically opposed to paint ball and laser tag because you specifically HAVE to point a 'weapon' at a person and pull a trigger.
He doesn't think it's a game kids should be playing - but the places are very popular.

This is not a big deal at all! Most little boys do gun play around that age and it's just normal. We had no TV, lived in a small town in Alaska, my husband is a geeky physicist/computer nerd type. Our son had never even seen a gun. He did not even have any toy guns! Yet through observing other preschool aged boys he picked it up very quickly and became obsessed!!! We got him a toy cowboy gun and let him play away with rules...no shooting at people unless they agree to play with you, and no shooting towards faces. We also taught him about gun safety in case he were ever at someone's house who had a gun. He outgrew it by age 6 or so. It's just a normal phase and probably a very healthy thing for little boys.

I think the schools have gone a LITTLE overboard with limiting gun play. Boys are boys, they do this no matter what they've seen at home it seems. Girls babble and play dress up, boys make noises and use their fingers for guns. I think talking about real vs play is a good thing. At this age it may go right over his head as he doesn't see that playing with his gun finger is a big deal. I can guarantee you that just about every male out there has done this in his childhood and they didn't grow up to be killers. We played Army when I was little and we also played Cowboys and Indians. No one worried about us then, it was just child's play.

I have 2 boys ages 24 and 13 and we played guns with them. Nerf guns were the best and no one got hurt & no one got angry--it was just fun. No shooting in the face as that could hurt an eye but other than that they just played. They eventually moved on and didn't play those games anymore.

Just try & teach him that it's ok to do gun play at home but not school, that's what we had to do with our youngest who loved drawing WWII battle scenes, you can imagine that didn't go over well. No one understood an 8yo that loved WWII history like he does.

Hope you find a good solution. I think we need to let boys be boys and girls be girls and if the girls want to play guns so be it and if the boys want to play with dolls, that's good too. They do outgrow these things.

My 3 year old is starting to do this already. I dont think its a big deal. They are just being boys! The bigger deal you make of it, the more they will want to do it. You certainly dont have to encourage it or buy them toy guns but otherwise I just would not worry about it.

You're husband is right, if all boys who played guns grew up to be vicious killers, the human race would have ended many generations ago.

I didn't like it either. And I told them so. Fortunately, it was a short phase.

:(

There have been actual studies done on thiscexact subject matter. Mist boys do this at some point in growing up. You need to keep enforcing no guns allowed when you see him shooting at someone, but really it's just a phase and he will be on to his next one before you know it. I remember, back in the day) my brother had a holster and two guns! Lol The guns were silver and the holster ws brown. I can't tell u how many times I was shot and had to pretend I was dead. Lol I can assure you that my brother has never been in any short of trouble, doesn't own any guns, so despite killing his sister several times as a kid, he is your average dad now. Lol

I don't remember the age, maybe birth?

We taught gun safety, and continue to reinforce gun safety. That's it.

I think this is very normal. Just ask your son not to point the pretend weapon at a person or animal.