Saratoga News Family Daze Debbie Farmer Son's fascination for guns confuses nonviolent mom I prided myself on passing my beliefs of peace, respect and nonviolence on to my children until the day my 3-year-old son made a gun out of a banana and shot me as I served him lunch. I was worried when I saw the gleam in his eyes as he shouted "boom!" and his obvious disappointment when I didn't drop the macaroni, clutch my chest and fall to the floor. "No guns." I disarmed him by swiping the banana from his hand. "And it's not nice to shoot Mommy." I was shocked my son would imitate such a violent act, so I consulted my current parenting survival handbook and found the chapter on behavior. I looked for the section on felony offenses and read the first sentence. "A child's play can be reflective of their surroundings." We didn't own any guns, real or plastic, and I've never been held up with fruit before, so I read on. "Take an active part in your child's role-playing and redirect them to using proper behavior." No problem, I thought, as he innocently ate his lunch. When we were finished, I put our entire set of Legos on the floor and began snapping pieces together to build a plastic town. I used the buildings pictured on the front of the container as a model. When we were finished I had sore fingers and a perfect model of a city--after a major earthquake. Since I couldn't find the right pieces, I built a fire station that looked like a combination boat and plane, several triangle houses and a car with propeller wheels. While I admired my creations, my son snapped three Legos into a rectangle, pointed at the furniture across the room, and shouted, "Boom!" "No," I said, trying to redirect his behavior. "Here's a nice car traveling down the street of a peaceful town." He pointed his deadly rectangle at the propellers. "Boom! Boom!" I consulted my survival handbook under Toddler Road Rage. It suggested I let my child express his hostile feelings through art. I pulled out the paint set and watched my son paint. I breathed a sigh of relief when he painted a typical stick figure and there were no signs of weapons or chalk outlines. "What a nice picture," I said. Then he quickly added a dark object to the stick figure's right hand. "Boom!" I began to wonder if his behavior had something to do with heredity (from my husband's side) or the diet soda I drank in my seventh month of pregnancy. I decided to lay down the law. "The only dangerous weapon you're allowed to handle is the vacuum. There will be no violence toward anything in this house, unless it's named Martha and tries to teach you how to make creamed butterballs in wine sauce from scratch." I paused. "Do you understand?" My son looked up at me with wide eyes. He put his arms around me and I carried him upstairs for a nap. I couldn't understand how such a gentle, loving boy could pretend to hurt others. He slept late and awoke when my husband came home from work. "Dinner's almost ready," I said as our son came downstairs and crawled onto my husband's lap on the sofa. "Daddy, clicker." he said. I watched suspiciously as he took the remote out of my husband's hand. "Remember, point it toward the television and press," my husband said. "Boom!" my son shouted. "Boom! Boom!" Suddenly, I realized my son wasn't a future violent offender; he was a budding channel surfer armed with a remote. Debbie Farmer can be contacted at debbie@ecis.com. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, January 27, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.