This afternoon we were 5 minutes late to preschool, so as I dropped Will off I got to see the kids and teachers in action. As Will washed his hands and picked out an activity, I watched a little boy get yelled at.
He’d been sitting at the table and playing with some kind of kinex building toys. As he built, he made little light saber/gun noises.
“NICOLAS! We do NOT make weapon noises at school. You can build, but you MAY NOT BUILD WEAPONS at school.” The teacher’s aid practically spit as she yelled at him. With the type of venom and disgust she expelled, you would have thought the kid had brought a M-9 out of his pants and was pointing it at his classmates.
Little boys love to fight. They play good guys, they play bad guys…they fight Evil, they pretend to be Evil…it’s what they do. If there isn’t a gun around, they’ll make one out of kinex. If there aren’t kinex, they’ll make it out of a stick. If there are no sticks, they’ll use their finger.
I hate guns as much as the next liberal democrat. I went to a dinner party recently and there was a giant bank-sized safe in the tiny living room. It practically took up the entire downstairs. “What’s that for?” I asked, expecting some awesome story. “Guns.” was the reply. EEEEW.
But little boys fighting evil, being knights and jedis…that has nothing to do with bringing an uzi to school and blasting away half your classmates. Playing with IMAGINARY weapons is to being a little boy what playing with dolls is to being a little girl. It’s classic. It’s innate. It’s harmless.
I called my Nana on the way home. She taught kindergarten in the 40s through 80s—she’d be able to tell me if this was new. And it is. She said of course her little boys played with imaginary weapons…they just asked them to leave the REAL weapons (beebee guns, sticks, etc) at home.
This fear of boys and weapons makes me sad. It completely misses the point of what is going on. It’s the equivalent of taking the dolls and play kitchens out of preschool and shouting at little girls who sing a lullaby to their pretend baby “Stop it! You’re 4! You’re not married, you little hoochie—what are you doing with a BABY out of wedlock?!” To think that playing cops and robbers on the playground will lead to teen sociopaths is the same as thinking that playing Mommy in the pretend corner will lead to teen mothers.
My little boy loves his baby doll Ta. But he also loves to be Luke Skywalker in Lego Star Wars and blast away the baddies. He loves to draw, but he also loves to fight our neighbors with his wooden sword and shield. And to teach 4 year olds that that side of play is somehow gross or inherently evil is to teach boys that it’s not okay to play with their full imagination.
And that really irks me.
