A few months ago, on one of my weekly daily trips to Target, I got lured to the toy aisle by Dash who wanted to “just look” for ideas for his upcoming birthday. We started in the action figure aisle, made our way to Matchbox cars and finally turned a corner to land in the gun aisle–nerf guns and laser guns, to be exact–but enough of them to take up an entire four-shelf stretch. There were guns of all sizes–little ones that could fit in your pocket all the way up to guns that took up an entire arms span. There were guns with flashing lights and sound effects, guns with motorized blasters for foam darts, guns with impressive sounding features like “speed load” and “surge fire.” Dash’s eyes grew huge as he took in the wall of guns, and the search for a birthday present was suddenly over.
“Gun!” he squealed. “I want a gun! A really big gun! I want a gun, Mom! I want a gun!” There’s nothing like a 5-year-old screaming “I WANT A GUN!” so loud in Target that people in the produce aisle no doubt heard him. And as funny as it was, I couldn’t help but feel this tinge of discomfort. I knew it wasn’t wrong for him to want a nerf gun, but there was something about standing in an aisle full of nothing more than play guns, hearing my kid yell “GUN! I WANT A GUN!” that made me dig into that discomfort and what I needed to do about it. I talked to my friend Amy about it later because, not only does she have three boys (not that it’s limited to boys), but she also offers the most thoughtful advice when it comes to my big questions in parenting.
Amy’s back today with her husband Jeffrey, a clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience working with children and families, to tackle the gun question in our blog series of parenting discussions with them. If you missed the first two posts, you can find their response to school lockdown drill concerns here and last week’s weight and body image discussion here. Amy and Jeffrey’s parenting book–about the six core needs every child has and every parent can meet–publishes next year (cannot WAIT!). Until then, I’m honored to share their wisdom and heart in this space.
My 5-year-old son’s birthday is coming up and all he wants is a nerf gun. He talks about it constantly, begging for it, but I feel torn about buying him a toy gun. I don’t want to disappoint him on his birthday, though. Help!
– Conflicted
Dear Conflicted, one of the most important things we can do as parents is learn to recognize and get comfortable with the feeling of tension you describe in your question. Because you’re a human and your son is his own person, too, you’ll feel this tension over and over again as he grows. Right now he’s asking for a nerf gun, and in the years to come he’ll want and ask for many other things you won’t be sure about and perhaps haven’t even considered. So when what he wants pulls you in a direction you’re not comfortable with, resist rushing to a decision. Instead, notice the pulling and get curious about it. Get still and listen to what the tension wants to show you. The discomfort is an invitation to learn more about your child and yourself, and it can to lead you somewhere important.
Your first task is to get inside your little one’s mind. What does he picture happening if your answer is yes and he gets the gun? And where is his ask coming from? Do other friends or kids he sees have nerf guns? Does he simply want to join in the play? Has he been captivated by cool commercials or flashy store displays? Think through whether the toy is something he truly wants or something that is being sold to him. It’s an important distinction.
Your second task is to get inside your own mind. What are you afraid might happen if you say yes? Be honest and specific about your fears. Are you worried that giving your son a nerf gun will encourage him to be violent? Do you have a history or experiences that would make pretend gun play in your home uncomfortable for you? Are you fearful about what other parents will think of you if they see your child with a play weapon? Are you scared or sad to give up the dream of the child you pictured raising, the one who was occupied for hours with homemade toys and wooden blocks? (Been there.) Say your fears out loud and listen to how they sound. Some will ring true, and some may lose their power when you examine them in the light.
If your child’s ask seems authentic and persists over time, but some of your fears also remain, reach out to others for help. There is wisdom in the village. Talk to other parents to find out what decisions they’ve made about this same issue. Have they shared your fears? And if so, what boundaries or rules did they set up around play guns that helped to ease some of their concerns?
We want our “yeses” to be wholehearted, because our children have a hard time separating our attitudes towards the things we let them have and do and our attitudes towards them. So if your fears are specific and lingering after you’ve examined them, talk to your son before you make your final decision. Using simple language, try to figure out if he is mature enough to accept the boundaries you’ll need to set around the toy. If it seems like your rules will be too difficult for him, then it may be time to wait. We set our relationships up for shame, resentment and future conflict if saying yes in the moment will lead to power struggles down the road.
Finally, remember that any answer of yes, no, or maybe-but-not-yet is not the end of the world. Generations of children have survived not getting what they wanted for their birthdays, just as generations of parents have grown by supporting their children in interests that didn’t match their own. Whatever you decide, you’ll both get through this decision. Letting the tension push you to wonder about your son and his world in new ways may teach you important things about yourself, too.
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You can connect more with the Dr. Jeffrey Olrick and Amy Olrick on their site, Growing Connected, and follow them on Instagram @growingconnected or Facebook. If you have a parenting question or issue you’d like Amy and Jeffrey to tackle, feel free to leave it in the comments. You can also sign up for their newsletter where they share more questions, answers and encouragement for any parent seeking more connection with their kids.
Have some thoughts and insights about toy guns? I’d love to hear them! Or, if you have a parenting question you’d like Amy and Jeffrey to tackle here in the coming weeks, please share in the comments!
This response seems very tone deaf to me. All though the issues raised may be important, I think it overlooks a huge problem with gun toys and gun play, which is that only certain parents (white, middle/upper class) enjoy the privilege of allowing their children to play with guns and not genuinely fear for their safety in the world. Parents of color must also weigh the real fear that a member of law enforcement (or even a “helpful” bystander that isn’t able to mind their own business) might see their child with a toy gun as a threat. Your fair-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed child faces little risk if he totes a toy gun around the neighborhood, but how do you think that might feel to a young black boy living nearby whose parents can’t let let him do the same?
I absolutely agree that this is a privilege (and I know Amy would too), and there’s a huge further conversation about race that play guns opens up. For the sake of answering this question directly, this response is concise and to the point, but perhaps another great question we could open up is the one you’ve initiated here. Important point you’ve made!
Yes to all of this. My husband and I have had this exact conversation and it is one of the main reasons we do not have gun play in our home.
Thank you so much for your comments. We believe that there are deeper questions behind almost everything that parents ask—questions that go back to the systems we live and grow up in. And that our families, and ultimately our societies, are best served by encouraging parents and children to understand and listen to each other, even when the children are very young.
That said, we wholeheartedly agree that the context for considering this particular question is vastly different for parents of color. Sometimes when we examine our fears, we’ll find they are unrealistic or over-exaggerated. And sometimes they are not. For parents of color, the fears and risk associated with letting their children play with a toy gun are clearly real. We welcome your invitation to consider the child who has to live under the heavy burden of that context while his friends do not.
We personally said yes to nerf guns when our boys were little, with very specific boundaries based on our personal values. As they’ve grown older and we’ve entered into conversations around subjects like racism and gun violence, they’ve lost interest in playing with toy guns on their own. We believe that our family’s process was made easier because we started from a place of listening to our kids’ perspective and keeping their interests and developmental stage in mind as we made our decisions. It is easier for our kids to hear what we want to show and teach them when we start with openness and respect about where they are coming from as well.
There is no universal right or wrong way to answer a question like whether or not a child should be allowed to play with a toy gun. But getting curious about our kids’ experiences and thinking through our own reactions, especially when our reactions are strong, opens up pathways for trust and healthy communication as our kids grow older and face choices that we will be far less able to control.
I also have a 6 year old boy, and have struggled with the gun play question. I’ve grown tired of people telling me “oh it’s just how little boys play” and have reached the point where I just say no. If toy guns come out at a play date we make excuses and leave. I’ve carefully explained to my son that guns hurt people and we are not ok with pretending to hurt people. He’s in elementary school now and I think it’s important that he knows why there are so many lock down drills in schools.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that maybe if more parents said no, maybe more boys would grow up realizing that guns aren’t toys. Maybe there’d be fewer school shootings. Maybe there’d be fewer kids caught in the cross fires. Maybe it’s optimistic to think that by taking away toy guns we can lower gun violence but we’ve got to start somewhere. In the past few years we’ve said “no, women shouldn’t be paid less then men” and “no, women shouldn’t have to be ok with sexual assault to keep their jobs” and we’ve talked about little boys need to be taught to be tough AND KIND…..why can’t we also say “no, kids shouldn’t play with guns.”?
As a mom of three boys, we have several nerf guns around the house. And we also have hockey sticks and real sticks and golf clubs that are used as guns as well. I was anti-gun toys for a long time, but realized that my child wasn’t wanting it just to be violent. They use them as their imaginations grow. They fight ninjas and pirates and dinosaurs. All sorts of things that I wasn’t expecting when we allowed them. With open conversation, it’s easier to understand their perspective. There are other gun-related games and activities that we aren’t comfortable with, but each individual must have the conversation. This isn’t a one-size fits all. And for the record, children of color are also playing these games and using the nerf guns. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world where we have to question and double-check everything.
I think allowing kids to plays with toy guns opens a great opportunity to teach them about gun safety.
I think allowing kids to plays with toy guns opens a great opportunity to teach them about gun safety.
We live in a rural area so guns are more common here. My kids have always had play guns and they’ve had BB guns. We used them as an opportunity to teach gun safety, we taught them how to use them, they always had rules for the BB guns-never point at a person, never shoot an animal, you don’t kill for fun you kill for food, etc.
I’ve noticed with my sons that even if they didn’t have a play gun available, they would still pick up a stick, make it a gun and head off for war in the backyard.
It just seems to be a boy thing.
I agree with the first comment. I also feel the response is tone deaf for other kids though, too.
I have to agree with Kirsten’s comment above. This post is more “how to handle not wanting to get my kid what they want for their birthday” rather than tackling the issue of talking to kids about tough topics.
You just posted about how to talk to your kids about active shooter drills in school, but then when your kid asks for a toy gun, this response missed the mark. This is a real teachable moment and learning opportunity to talk about gun safety and the real purpose of a gun. “Some people have guns to keep them safe, like police officers. Sometimes people use guns and it’s not safe.” I don’t see harm in educating our children that people feel uncomfortable when kids run around pretending to shoot each other. OUR KIDS PRACTICE HIDING FROM SHOOTERS IN SCHOOLS. And then they come home and we let them play with toy guns? I am all for letting kids be kids, but I would not give my son a toy gun without some (age-appropriate) discussion about gun use and ownership.
I love your posts, and enjoyed Amy and Jeffrey’s previous posts, but this one was disappointing.
Wholeheartedly agree with Kirsten. Huge blind spot of this post that makes it seem surface level at best.
The other thing that disturbs me about this post is that guns are not toys. We do not buy our children toy knives,toy bombs etc. guns are no different and to ever give the child the idea that a gun may be used without parental supervision (or used by a 5 year old at all) or that guns can be pointed at people is asinine.
I do not like the way that this article talks about “parent fears.” My fears? My fears about letting my child play with a gun is that he or she will be conditioned to view guns as a toy, something to have to be manly or cool and something to purchase without deeply thinking about and preparing for it. My fear is that a gun becomes a part of the play routine. Not in my house. My fear is that buying my child a gun will contribute to the ways in which this country minimizes and ignores gun violence which kills thousands of people a year. And yes To bring it back to Kirsten’s point if my child was a person of color I would be terrified to let them play with a gun for the reasons she mentioned. To me, if I had a white child, this is a flag no child should play with guns- if people of color can’t do it, we in my house aren’t gonna do it either.
This post is a bare bones, insensitive analysis of THE issue of our time.
Having been raised alongside 4 brothers and now raising a couple of sons myself, I’ve seen 2 incredible instincts in boys and men that we don’t give a lot of credit to in our culture.
The 1st one is to protect. I grew up with lots of time in nature, and there were some wildlife situations that I knew my dad or my brothers had my back. Because we are not “on the pioneer frontier” nowadays, the need for that kind of protection is much much less. But I do try to encourage this instinct in my boys. In ways that are appropriate to our current situation.
The 2nd instinct is to provide. To contribute in a real way to survival/thriving. And again, encouraging games/play along those lines seems like a healthy development of an inborn drive.
Plus boys like things that make noise. So I understand when you look at all three of those factors, it makes sense why boys have this fascination with guns.
Also we have military family background, so there has been a positive example of protecting our country.
I think, like many parenting choices, a lot comes into play with what we are teaching our kids, and how we are steering them. And I don’t want to teach my boys to be afraid of a weapon that can be used for good things – protecting our country, hunting to provide for their families (if that’s what they chose), etc. At the same time, since it is a weapon, it can be used for great evil. And that’s where it’s so important as the parent to teach the purpose of it.
Thanks for broaching a sensitive topic!
This advice was helpful concerning many of the other things my child may ask for or demand from me. However, I can’t believe in America today that we are still selling toy guns of any sort in stores (not to mention violent video games.) Why would anyone encourage the imaginative play of shooting something or someone? Target practice can be fun but is also just as easily satisfied with a basketball and hoop, bean bag toss, horseshoes, etc…The 1950s nostalgia of toy gun play is Over. Just like children disappearing alone outside to play all day in the summer and smoking on airplanes. We were recently in a local restaurant where a young boy of about 3 years old was toting a huge, plastic laser gun. Unbeknownst to me he had aimed it at my 6 year old daughter, pretending to shoot her from across the room. It wasn’t until after we left that she shared that with us and has for the past 3 weeks continued to bring it up, traumatized that a little boy whom she never met would do that to her, someone he didn’t know. Your parenting choices shape not just your own child’s experiences but also inadvertently shape the experience of everyone your child comes into contact with. Feed your kids the red food dyed slurpees. Keep ’em out until after 10 on a school night. Heck, send them to school in that shirt with the holes and stains that you keep forgetting to get rid of…I get it! But, if I see your child with a toy gun I will be judging you and your parenting choice HARD.
Hi!
First of all I would like to say that it is so enriching to go through all the comments. I can share views with all of the commenters even when they do not agree because the issue is so complex I doubt there is a unique right answer and under each person’s light it makes so much sense what they express.
I write from Europe where fortunately shooters at schools are non existent (we sure have our own issues but are lucky with this one) and we also have distinct opinions among parents.
I have bought Nerf guns for my kids (5 year old and 4 year old twins). We did not feel comfortable buying them, we were worried they would hurt each other, but they insisted so much and it was THE only Christmas present they wanted that we gave in. We also thought it would pass and it has. They were used intensively for a couple of days. End of story.
As a person from outside the American culture I always find hard to swallow how strongly the military life is celebrated by people supporting no gun policies.
For me it is difficult to celebrate people who kill other people. Is this confusing for your children? It’s also true that I belong to a country that has used violence to fight for their freedom and have always been tought that we fight for our freedom without violence because those who fight for freedom with guns are terrorists.
I know there is a difference.
I do not want to disrespect militars. I can see their effort, the risks they take.
I want to understand how you make sense as a culture of all these concepts together.
When talking about gun safety there are always comments made linked to gun toys but I have never seen anything being said on the military praise.
I apologize if I have hurt anyone because english not being my mother tongue I might have not used the most appropriate way to describe this delicate subject.
I hope you can understand that my doubts are initiated with a deep interest to understand.
Thank you!
Wow, this topic has sure brought out interesting opinions. I think it is helpful for all of us to read them. So Kelle, thanks for giving us that opportunity. I hope that the comments will be civil so the thoughts behind them can be absorbed without ugly feelings.
I have a 5 year old son that has toy swords, shields, shooters, water guns, water shooters, nerf guns, legos with shooters, legos with bombs, bomber airplanes, etc. Boys need to use these things in play, where they can use there imagination and play out fantasy. They should be able to fight monsters and fight dragons or play pirates. If my son doesn’t have a toy he has a stick or a piece of mulch that he uses to pretend. The reason kids do pretend play is to work through scenarios over and over in different ways. Boys need this outlet. If you hinder this they are more likely to grow up to have a problem with guns.
This is an interesting subject, and one that is good to talk about. I think maybe even in the U.S. there are different cultures that encourage different gun play.
My 3 year old does have a play gun, but we use it as a way to teach him. My husband and various other family members and friends all go deer hunting and my 3 year old is very aware that we only shoot deer. We don’t allow him to even point his play gun at people. and He knows this. We talk about how guns are for hunting. and if you ask him what he can shoot he will tell you that he shoots deer, bears, moose…etc. but not people. We use it as a “fun” training tool as real guns are going to be a part of his life eventually and are to be treated carefully.
And not for violence toward humans. Not even for pretend.
I think there is a lot in our culture that treats guns as something so taboo, that parents might be too scared to give practical and common sense training? I don’t know but- thanks for the post. I think it’s great to have discussions at this point when kids are young. Parents are responsible for the training of their kids so that we don’t have such tragic events.
As Nancy Reagan said (and I am not a fan!) “just say no”. I don’t see the point of analyzing all aspects of your decision. If it makes you uncomfortable, have doubt or just don’t like what it represents (even in toy form) then don’t get him a gun. There are many times when you will have to say no to your children and they won’t be traumatized. The old argument: “well Tommy, Susie, all my friends, have one…why can’t I have one, too?” I was pretty strict with my son. Never allowed video games until he was 12 and had first done all his school work and played outside. Don’t believe in giving kids cell phones when they become catatonic staring at it all day long. In the end…it’s your decision and your call…no one else’s.
My kids played with toy guns growing up and as a family of hunters and living in the country with a big hunting community they learned gun safety at a very young age. My friend who’s kids weren’t even allowed squirt guns would go crazy at the sight of toy guns at our house. “Killing” everything in sight like a mad person. I’d be more afraid of a kid like that finding a real gun at a friend’s home and having an accident. My kids knew never to touch a real gun without an adult nearby and to tell an adult if they ever saw one laying around.