Painless Attacks

I know my blogs have all been about Jack lately, but he is just at that often trying, but so hilarious stage right now! Here's another dose of Jack:

Jack loves weapons: guns, swords, axes (yes, we have a toy axe... from a pirate costume I think??), sticks... he's always shooting and whacking things, including his mom. For about half a second, I considered not giving my kids toy weapons (I had to at least pretend I thought they were inappropriate) but in the absence of real toys, they all fashion their own out of sticks, tinker toys, legos, shoes, blankets... you name it - it can and will be made into some sort of weapon.

So it is no surprise that with two older brothers who are quite skilled in battle, that Jack has learned early how to defend himself.

What is different about Jack though is that because he is as young as he is, I don't think he quite gets what a weapon is actually for! He makes the appropriate motions and sound effects, but his words just don't quite match: "Pow! I shoot you mom!" When I feign injury, he quickly says, "Don't worry mom! It not gonna hurt!" He stabs me with a stick or whacks me in the behind and I genuinely am hurt and he assures me, "I not gonna hurt you!" He pretended to throw some sort of exploding weapon at me from the back seat today, and I said, "Ow!" His response: "No, mom! It not hurt you! It not gonna hurt!"

I think he doesn't quite get it. At least he doesn't actually want to hurt me. I have to say, I never hear him say that to his brothers. Perhaps he doesn't mind hurting them occasionally...

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!

I know a lot of moms (and some dads too) are anti-guns and weapons when it comes to play things for their boys.  How you keep them from making their own weapons out of sticks, pieces of race track, and toilet paper tubes is something I'd be interested in hearing about though!

I don't feel very strongly on the subject.  I do give them some boundaries and rules regarding their use of weapons, but I do I allow them to mock fight and use foam swords and to let their creativity abound when it comes to fashioning their own weapons and hunting down "bad guys" in the back yard.  Their world is full of sticks and strings and interesting-shaped things that are just begging to be used in this manner!

So my boys play with weapons and feel quite heroic while doing it, I must say.  Today, they watched a bit of Robin  Hood before they tired of that and decided the day was just too beautiful to sit on a couch watching cartoons and they'd rather BE Robin Hood out in the backyard!

That is how I left things when I took off for the grocery store.  When I returned home, they had fully emersed themselves in the game and even enlisted the biggest boy: daddy (who is also a HUGE Robin Hood fan.)  Ben was busy shooting arrows at multiple targets with his home-made bow fashioned out of a piece of race track and a string (don't think that toy will work as a race track anymore...)  

Mitchell and Dad were up to worse though - they had out Matt's pellet gun and were shooting little yellow foam things all over the yard!  Now, these do not come out very fast and Mitchell was heavily supervised anyways, but that gun does not look like a toy and I cringe every time all three boys play with it together.  Although it looks it, it is not actually a dangerous toy - not unless, that is, you shoot it at your or someone else's eye!  

Boys are boys and, in my opinion, it is healthy for them to pretend to fight bad guys.  I love to watch them rescuing each other and other pretend characters.  But every time that ominous-looking toy gun comes out, the words of all the adult figures from "A Christmas Story" echo in my head: "You'll shoot your eye out!"  Someday that gun will mysteriously disappear and I will claim no knowledge of it's whereabouts...