Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 27, 1992 TAG: 9201270219
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CHILDREN USE GUNPLAY TO ACT OUT PROBLEMS
Pretending gunplay can be a healthy outlet for children, a psychologist says. But if they start doing it constantly, there's a problem.
Stephanie Pratola never buys toy guns for her sons.
"I think you can show them what you value by not investing your money in toy guns."
But that doesn't mean that toy guns never show up in her house. Her boys, 7 and 9, get them from friends or create them out of their imagination from things lying around the house.
"Kids make things be guns if they need guns," Pratola says. "At some point, you've got to be able to symbolically display aggression. If you don't let them play guns, they play swords. If you don't let them play swords, they play lasers."
As a mother, Pratola has done some thinking about children and gunplay.
As a clinical psychologist, she frequently deals with the issue of guns and aggression.
In her private practice in the Roanoke Valley, Pratola often uses play therapy with the children she counsels. They often want to act out their problems through gunplay.
Children play guns in two ways - either they are imitating and imagining or they are acting out aggression. For children, playing is their way of thinking out loud.
You can't tell a child not to think about something, she said. "If you tell them don't think about a white polar bear, they'll think about it."
But if guns are the only toys you buy for your kids, she said, you're not giving them much chance to use their imagination in other ways.
Children will repeat a game over and over, she said, but a parent should be concerned when a child seems to get stuck on repeating a game - such as gunplay - to the point it's the only thing they do. "Then you have to ask yourself: What's bothering my child?"
You have to wonder whether they are seeing too much violence, in real life or on television.
Usually, when children play with guns, they will take on a character such as He Man or the Ninja Turtles, and they'll march, hide, hunt, eat and shoot. But if the only way they use their imagination is shooting at people, "then I would be concerned."
She believes parents also should remember that kids watch what you do more than they listen to what you say. You give a mixed message if you tell a kid to be careful with guns but at the same time keep one in your pickup truck, she said.
Also, if kids are constantly exposed to threats and violence and anger "and the need to be right at all costs," they will play that out if they have access to guns.
Even when children do play with guns, she said, you should set limits. Make sure they follow the same safety rules they would if the guns were real.
When she does play therapy with children, "If they're acting like it's a real gun, then I tell them they can't point it at me." If a child wants to play that he's killing someone, then she'd have them have one doll kill another - "so that fantasy and reality don't blur that much."