Last night DH and were talking about toys we'll let our child play with and what not when he/she will be born. I told DH that if we have a girl she will be allowed to play with dolls but not with Bratz as they send a bad message out to young girls. about Barbies I'm not really sure..I loved barbies when I was a child, they do dress in a way better than bratz but not always, even as a child I knew they in some ways were trying to dress all sexy but I normally like dressing my barbies up in big puffy dresses than mini skirts and fixing their hair.
About having a boy I told DH I don't want him to have any toy guns and swords. DH didn't agree and said they are boy toys and that every boy should have a toy sword. I told him it's promoting violence and I don't want our kid going around pointing his toy gun at people trying to 'kill' them.
DH said he'll teach him the real meaning of a sword and how to use it since he's learning Kempo (like karate but different). I'm all for my DH teaching our child self defense but to me there is a different between learning self defense and having toy swords and guns pretending going around shooting and stabbing people I mentioned that there are alot of other toys out there besides guns and swords our child can play with (trucks, trains, lego's, and so on....)
What do you think, would you let your child play with swords and guns? if no please state why, if yes please state why.
Oh and please give a list of toys your child is allowed to play with and what kind of toys he/she are not allowed. I'm showing this thread to DH so we can both get ideas
Well I have 2 boys so far and both my boys play with guns and the oldest plays with swords. When I was growing up we also had guns and swords and it never made us violent. I think part of allowing ANY toy is training a child. With us we were trained how to play with the toy and my parents also had real guns in our house. When my Dad would get a new gun he would come in ahd show us the gun with supervision of course and then put it in the gun case and told us if any of us EVER got in there without permission, we would regret it and we never did. I wouldn't even open it to dust it or clean the glass if I wasn't supervised...lol. Part of what worked here is my father did let us see the gun, so no longer were we curious. I think parents now days don't supervise their kids close enough and are not there for their kids enough and that is what leads to violence. Both my brother and myself know how to shoot a gun and were taught when we were old enough and even after that were not allowed into the gun case. My father did want us to know how to protect ourselves and yet again it him showing and teaching kept us from being nosey and getting into that cabinet. I can tell you I was also a child who climbed, snooped, plundered, and was very hyper but I listend to my father because he allowed me to be taught. We got to look at the gun in a catalog or some other place where we could read about it, we got to ask questions and all that. This is the same way we are raising our kids. My oldest has saw my husbands guns, he has got to touch them, only under supervision and he has never tried to look without Daddy.
I can tell you this too, boys can find violence if they are looking for it and if they are not taught no matter what toys they had. My son is more "violent" with his trains and cars then the guns...lol. NO not really but he can get wild. He is also a child who is very hyper
but he does again he has been trained and taught and worked with on this. It is just like throwing his trains and cars and other stuff, he has been trained and taught what is appropriate play and where appropriate play for these toys are.
My sons can play with guns, swords, trains, cars, blocks, puzzles, stuffed animals, veggie tale or other christian stuff, animals, little people, bugs, certain games, wow I could go on and on
What my boys cannot play with are dolls, girl toys like Barbie ( something though for you to think about with BArbie is she promotes a level of perfection that most times cannot be achieved for young girls and promotes vanity not saying I would limit a girl of mine from playing with Barbie but your worried about promoting violence and in a way this is something to consider) My kids are not allowed to play with or watch anything that I think affects the morals and values that I am teaching such as Sponge Bob. My son will even tell people now that God doesn't like Sponge Bob
lol. I hope this helps I haven't read the other replies but that is my 2 cents