Tuesday 15 March 2016

Should we allow kids (without mental disorders) to play war or military toys?

Source background
According to “I banned my son from having toy guns”, Matt Gaw (2014) told us that he would not like to let his son play war or military toys, particularly toy guns, because these kinds of toy seem to represent violence and cruelty in society, although he used to wage war on his brother for several times during childhood. In fact, having published for a decade, the research conducted by London Metropolitan University indicates that children will become disheartened and withdrawn if they are incessantly reprimanded for acting as superheroes or military playing. Additionally, Prof. Klaus Doddes from University of London, who has been studying about playing Action Man with his team, says that "War toys, on the one hand, can be associated with joy, with pleasure, imagination. They can also be used to help children talk about trauma, particularly when guns have been involved. There is some interesting research going on in a variety of places that have looked at play and toys as a way of coping with post-traumatic stress."


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My Yes/No question is:
Should we allow kids (without mental disorders) to play war or military toys?

My answer is:
Yes, we should. The more parents are likely to thwart them, the more they tend to disobey. War or military toys never make trouble by themselves. In turn, the problems regarding aggressiveness, violence, cruelty and the like results from behaviors and learning of their players. Generally speaking, it is a right for children to be able to play them, whereas their parents should take care and give advice to them closely in order that children can play safely and learn the possible benefits and drawbacks of that kind of toys when compared the real ones. After normal kids who are not suffered from any mental disorders can play under the careful supervision of parents, they would have create new attitudes, develop their brains or minds, and understand how to play them carefully. Take the case of Songkran Festival as an example. Both children and adults use water guns joyfully. In general, adults allow them to play without worry about the possibility to lead children to harshness in the future despite the fact that it is one kind of toy guns. This would not cause problem like violence in children if they use them appropriately for entertainment, not for attacking anyone or other vicious purposes.

But, my answer can be possibly No as well. This is due to the danger which may result from material used for producing such toys. Perhaps, some of them consist of sharp or penetrating edges. That might be big problems that are harmful to body’s players, particularly on their face. Likewise, some toys are probably composed of many tiny components, which are somewhat dangerous for children if they swallow them without discretion during playing. Sometimes, if they play toy guns which can release toy bullets, that might cause injury or wound on other people. What’s more, those toys may be produced form prohibited chemical or material, or they were produced without good standard and quality, causing hazard to players. In this case, I would agree to not allow children to play toys which are unsafe and not up to correct standard due to the concern about their health and harm.
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Reference
Gaw, M. (2014, April 26). I banned my son from having toy guns. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/26/banned-son-having-toy-guns

7 comments:

  1. Yes, I will allow them to do so. If I were a father, I'd support their choice instead of forbid them. The duty of parents is to offer many possibility under warm and broad-minded guidance. I quite understand their reasons but maybe I am persuaded for not to offer them those kind of stuff.

    Your blog make me think about the children's day in Thailand, which has became the festival for 'mass psychology' from the military. They do nothing except act like a spoiled child throwing a party in order to try to show off their toys and craving for love. Back to your topic, we should concern more about time and place we spent with our children on the children's day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Parents should pay more attention to time and place where they spend with their kids on Children’s day. Also, they should concern about the activities for children.

      Delete
  2. Yes, children should be allowed to play war toys. We should not circumscirbe students' freedom or passion but in fact we should support and help them understand that guns are dangerous and should not be used.

    If a child is not allowed to plays guns toys, they will keep in mind that one day he will use them as it's an imprinting memories of his childhood. Just be open-minded and allowed them to have good and wonderful childhood as other within your supervision. It will benefit him more than anyone else. Thus, I think that children should be allowed to play military toys.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Non, I support your well-written reasons and comments. At least, I used to have many toy guns and war toys to play alone or with my brothers during childhood. When I grew up, I’ve never liked violence, war, crime and the like at all despite spending several years playing such toys. In turn, I learned a lot from playing them, understanding how to play appropriately and how harmful they are if they were real ones. As far as I’m concerned, I believe some boys or even girls might be inspired by this to become good future soldiers or police of a country as well.

      Delete
  3. Yes, we should allow them to play war toys. Children have a natural curiosity in themselves. This curiosity is important for them to seek some new experiences and become a good learner so if they ask me to let them play a gun, I would allow them to have the safe one. tell them that this is a toy. The real one isn't for playing because it's dangerous.
    I think the most important point is the way parents treat their children because children will grow up by copying their behavior from the environment. Therefore, we should take care of them closely.
    When he was little, my cousin’s son likes to play a military toy too. When he played a sword toy, his mother afraid that he might play it too strong that someone might get hurt more than worrying about having a real sword. So she brought that sword and trash on him slightly to let him feel a little pain and told him that if you trash on other people, they will get hurt like this. The result is he played it carefully and his mother also watch him while he was playing too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good points! Ploy. Children have curiosity in several things surrounding them, whilst their parent’s duties are to teach correctly and to give them good advice as much as possible. Even though we may restrict their rights or not allow doing something like playing war toys, we cannot keep doing these all the time. Thus, I think treating them attentively and properly is an essential activity for all parents.

      Delete
  4. Yes, we should. As others have already mentioned a lot about this, I would just mention just for my part. No matter how old the kids are, they should be well taught of what is right and what is wrong instead of prohibiting. If the kids are not introduced well, their thinking process will be held in a small frame and they will never know what is right and what is wrong. It might also cause dilemma due to the lack of knowledge.

    ReplyDelete

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