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W hen we found out that we were having a boy, I was surprised. Okay, shocked. I don’t know why, but it didn’t really occur to me that our baby wouldn’t be a girl.  We had a great, top-secret name picked out and were really excited to be able to use it. But then apparently an old popsicle stick showed up in the ultrasound.  (I say “apparently” because I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at, and a popsicle stick seemed as likely as any other thing that might show up there).  Which started a whole previously unimagined series of events.

For instance, my husband’s greatest fear became that our son would be a juvenile offender, or worse, a Nickelback fan. I became concerned about the appalling state of boys’ clothing. It seems to consist of infant track suits with bulldozers on them (I don’t get it -- babies can’t drive bulldozers!), or for the older boy, track suits that feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Which everyone knows cause snotty crusted noses and bed head. I assume that this unholy trinity is a causal relationship since they are always seen together. 

But recently I realized we would soon have to deal with an even more upsetting relationship: that of boys and things that go Bang Bang. 

I’ve never liked violence. I cover my eyes during violent or gory parts of movies – not just close them, but actually cover them with my hands. The thought of having a little boy running around the house with his arm pointed out yelling “Bang, I shot you, you’re dead!” is one of the worst things I can imagine about parenthood. 

I hate the idea that as a society we’re so desensitized to the real violence and horrors that unfortunately surround us that we think playing shooting video games and watching mass murders in movies is great entertainment. As a soon-to-be parent, some of the values I want to teach my child include empathy, compassion and kindness towards others.  And that hurting others is pretty much the worst thing you can do as a human being. How do I reconcile this with the apparent magnetic attraction of boys towards things that hit, shoot and explode, as evidenced by the daily shouting and crashing of sticks and fake guns wielded by the local boys in our neighbourhood, often on my lawn?

I found myself in the middle of a conversation about this very thing by a group of mothers with sons. 

From a child's creative mind (photo by Stephen Recker)Among three of them, they had different approaches with varying degrees of success. One had made anything violent forbidden, including TV, other than public-access shows, and no gun, sword or other replica-weapon of mass destruction had made it past her front door. But as soon as her son started school, he would come home with visions of machine guns and war whoops. Very creatively, in the absence of any toy guns, he even made his own by chewing the edges of a piece of toast into a crude facsimile of a gun and started making shooting noises. 

Another decided to not make a big deal of guns either way, and when her son saw a water squirter at the dollar store and asked for it, they bought it with little discussion. It soon fell of out favour and now resides in the basement. He’ll sometimes “play guns,” but is more likely to play other kinds of make-believe with his friends.

The third woman was lucky enough to have an extended family member who is a police officer, and was able to address it in the real-world terms of guns hurting people and needing to call the police or go to the hospital, and have it reinforced by an adored “Uncle John.”

I see the spectrum of approaches here, and hope to incorporate some aspect of all three when my own time comes. I just hope that before we have to deal with guns and “bad guys,” we’ll have been able to set a foundation of hugs and cuddles, and sharing. As sickeningly saccharine as it sounds, just as Shel Silverstein hoped, I’d like to promote “hug-o’-war” around my house as the neighbourhood kid’s game.