The Story of Noah’s Gun
Jul 26, 2002 Parenting
Zelda’s entry made me think about Noah and his play. It has certainly become more “boyish” as he’s gotten older and sometimes that’s made me have to step back and reevaluate what I expect from him.
Many of my friends demonize stereotypical “boy” play. A lot of my friends have daughters and all of us are leery of male aggression. We’re feminists and we know that male aggression has hurt a lot of people in the world. Some of my friends who have sons get very concerned if their boys act like “typical boys” and they tend to brag if their sons *don’t* play like “typical boys.” I worry about our tendency to label kids’ play with our own limiting ideas about what’s appropriate. Of course play that hurts another person should be off-limits. But it gets murky when little boys want to play good guy - bad guy or when little girls want to dress up like little princesses. Suddenly we feel like if we allow it, their little minds will somehow warp.
I grew up with a brother and so I feel more comfortable with “boyish” things then many other women I know. It helps, too, that my brother was younger than I was so I was never at the mercy of him. Some of my friends remember being tormented by their bigger brothers and because their parents weren’t very present, it went too far. So their tendency is to blame “boyish” behavior when really the blame should be on their parents from not protecting everybody. For what it’s worth, my sister was much nastier than my brother ever was, she’ll admit it, too. Go ahead, ask her.
I also have a husband who is very, very gentle but who grew up the oldest of three boys. He has a lot of experience about boy expectations (his father was career army for awhile and expected his sons to be pretty tough) and typical boy play. Brett set fire to his G.I.Joe’s and wrestled with his brothers and had toy guns. But he’s grown to be incredibly kind and thoughtful and pro-feminist. He can look back on his own growing up with an understanding but critical eye. As Noah gets older and turns to his father more and more, I am so grateful to know that I can absolutely trust Brett to help him figure out how to be a man.
At three, Noah’s play started becoming more “boyish.” He quit cooking in his toy kitchen and started using it as a dungeon for his stuffed animals. He told me I could put away his dollhouse (although he asked for it out again recently to make “a haunted house”) and he lost all interest in his baby doll, Reeser.
His need for good vs. evil games became stronger when he was about four. For awhile, he wanted to play this out with animal toys and animal costumes. He became fascinated with dinosaurs. But gradually, he wanted to do this with people, too. This is when he started to like cowboys (we have couple of ancient golden books with violent-free - and eurocentric-free - stories) and wanted to “fight bad guys.” I really struggled with this. Was my son buckling under cultural expectations? But then I sat back and thought hard about it. He has a lot of girl friends and his best boy friend doesn’t have “boy” toys and he doesn’t watch commercial TV so maybe he wasn’t getting this from somewhere else. Even if he was getting it from some book or some kid on the playground, did that in any way invalidate his desire to play that way? I figured that I had two choices: I could either give him room to create his own play or I could start placing some hard limits based on my own particular cultural expectations.
This leads me to the story of Noah’s gun or should I say, The Story of Noah’s Gun.
Last 4th of July, when Noah was 4.5, we went to a barbecue where there were lots of bigger boys. They all had those monster squirt guns and Noah was fascinated. Like most of my friends, we had a “no gun” policy for our house. I felt very comfortable with this and had confidently read Who’s Calling the Shots (a book I *highly* recommend). I even sent Noah to a great preschool across town because the great preschool down the street allowed war play. (I still feel good about that because I think this kind of play is inappropriate in a large group setting where supervision is more difficult.)
Noah really wanted one of those squirt guns and he talked and talked about it for the whole week after. I reminded him that at our house, toy guns weren’t allowed and he tried to find loopholes. What if someone brought one over? Stuff like that.
One day we were sitting outside eating our lunch and Noah was staring off into the distance very thoughtfully. I knew that he was thinking about those damn squirt guns.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I said.
“I was thinking about those guns at J.’s,” he answered. (Bingo! Mommy’s are psychic.) “I really want one.”
I launched into the whole thing again.
“Noah, I don’t like guns because guns hurt people. They kill people.”
“These are toy guns,” Noah explained patiently. “They just shoot water.”
“Well, I don’t like the idea of pretending with toy guns,” I answered. “I don’t think it’s ok to play that we’re hurting people even if it’s just pretend.”
“But you don’t have to play,” he said. “I just want to play.”
Hmmm, food for thought.
“You know, if you really feel like you need a gun, we could make one out of your legos.”
“No,” said Noah, shaking his head sadly. “It’s not the same. They don’t really shoot anything.”
We sat silently for awhile.
“But Mommy,” Noah said suddenly. “I don’t want to play about killing people, I want to squirt water so that I can stay cool.”
“You can use the spray bottle for that,” I said.
“It’s not the same thing,” he sighed. “I want one of those because they shoot so far. And I don’t want to kill anybody but maybe I would want to shoot a lion if it was sneaking up on us. I wouldn’t hurt anybody, Mommy, I wouldn’t spray anybody’s face, and that’s all that hurts. I would be so careful.”
I didn’t say anything because I was thinking about something that my mom had said. She had noticed that whenever Noah was playing with his little guys (his little figurines) in a way that was aggressive -good guy, bad guy - at her house, he got anxious. He’d say, “Mommy doesn’t like this kind of playing.” I’d seen this myself. I realized that *I* was demonizing his “boy” play and that if I truly believed kids should be in charge of their own play, then I needed to let go. I don’t think I can describe the epiphany I had sitting there in a way that would give you the same epiphany and that’s ok. I think the gun issue is too complicated for there to be a blanket rule for all families. But this is how our conversation went after that light bulb went on.
“Listen, Noah,” I said, very seriously. “If you really want one of those squirt guns, I will get one for you. I don’t like guns but it’s ok that you like things that I don’t. We’re two different people. Now we have to set some ground rules for gunplay.”
The rules are basic and Noah helped come up with them. The most important rule is that you must ask someone if they’d like to play with you before you start playing with them. In other words, no fair shooting the dog; she can’t give you her permission. Noah was so excited and proud, too, because he’d been able to convince me and I trusted him. That night when Daddy came home, we bought two squirt guns so that Daddy would have one, too. Since then he’s also gotten a cowboy gun from his Grandpa and he has Playmobil people with guns. He’s actually not that interested in them now and rarely plays with them. In fact, I think he’s played with that squirt gun maybe three times. I think that it’s likely that he would be *more* interested if they were off-limits.
He knows that most of his friends can’t play with guns so he’s happy to put them away when other kids come over. And he knows that I don’t like them but also that I did like them when I was little (I used to be a cowgirl when I was five). It’s still an open discussion in our house.
I don’t have any desire to change other people’s “no gun” policies. I still feel very ambivalent about toy guns. It’s a constant balancing act for me. I want Noah to feel free to be himself and I know that if I’m not careful, I could make him feel bad for being exactly who he is. I guess I’d worry more if Noah carried any of his mean play out into the real world but in real life people are always commenting about what a gentle, kind boy he is. He’s never hurt another child, never taken a toy out of someone’s hand. I don’t know. Perhaps he can be so lovely because he gets his aggressiveness out in his play. I certainly think that parents can make room for that without giving up their own “no gun” policies but I felt like I needed to hear Noah and honor what he was saying.
The most difficult, most scary thing for me is knowing that Noah has to operate in a world where boys are expected to be mean and tough. I can’t isolate him from that as much as I would like to. I just read the children’s book, Wringer by Jerry Spinelli (who also wrote the wonderful Maniac Magee) that was extremely thought-provoking. I asked Brett how realistic the depiction of boy behavior was and he said it sounded fairly apt.
Man, you can see why the Children’s Defense Fund adopted the fisherman’s prayer, can’t you?
Dear Lord, be good to me
the sea is so wide
and my boat is so small
p.s. per Zelda (and you have to scroll down to the July 22nd entry, I can’t link to it myself): We’ve never spanked Noah. Brett and his brothers were never spanked either despite being “high-energy.” However, I don’t hear her encouraging everyone else to spank their sons and I think she’s pretty clear that she spanks when she’s at the end of her rope. So what can I say? I wish she felt that she had other recourse for her anger and frustration.
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