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"W hat's this?" demands Oliver, holding up a clenched fist with the thumb and index finger extended. He knows what it is and he knows that I know, but I play dumb and guess: "A letter L?"

"No, it's a gun!" he trumpets, and Mimi and I both wince. The idea of guns, as toys or otherwise, has infiltrated his circle of daycare friends and I am appalled and saddened that they seem to have embraced it.

I think he first mentioned last summer that he and another boy "sometimes play guns." It was funny when he told me that "sometimes me and D. fight hats," as I pictured them engaged in a kind of fencing duel using toddler-sized ball caps. The clearest way of expressing my dismay at the time was to say that "Guns are stupid. All they do is hurt people and break stuff," at which point Oliver seemed to defer to my world knowledge.

I wonder how young children become aware of violence.

But the "hand gun" appears from time to time and I wonder who or what it is that makes children as young as 3 years old aware of violence and militarism. I find it just as unsettling that camouflage is a popular pattern for children's clothing. Are we meant to be desensitizing toddlers to warfare? They may not realize its purpose, admittedly, but I saw a more explicit expression of military chic at Old Navy: pajamas intended for small children, featuring a pattern of charging green plastic toy soldiers. On a recent trip to Old Navy, Mimi reported that she saw kids' Vans and flip-flop sandals in camouflage. Flip flops! Can't the beaches and other peace-loving summertime activities be shielded from the visual metaphors of war?

Now, I remember playing with such toys myself, but I don't think war or military paraphernalia should be fetishized among the pre-school set. I'd like to delay some of Oliver's exposure to geopolitics and history for some time yet, and despite the prominence of peacekeeping operations for which Canadian soldiers are lauded, I'm not ready to explain concepts like "army" and "soldier" in terms of merely "helping people" as I have done with the emergency services.

When Oliver is old enough, I think both Mimi and I are ready to explain the reality of war, that there probably will be at least one happening when he becomes old enough to be curious about the wider world, and that some people become soldiers, wear uniforms, set out to kill other people they identify as enemies and may themselves die violent deaths. When that time comes, and I hope it will be a very gradual awareness, I hope he will also be able to appreciate the terrible price everyone involved pays and not something along the lines of, "Hey, that soldier on TV/in that video game is wearing a uniform just like my pajamas/Vans/flip flops!"

R ight now, soldiers, video games and Vans are foreign to him, and I know neither Mimi nor I want to keep him in the dark about war, mindless entertainment or ephemeral fashion trends forever. We're not stupid enough to believe we can wholly influence his views on both serious and trivial subjects. But, most of all, I don't want him to confuse what is serious and what is trivial. We can't stop him from playacting some militaristic games with another kid, nor do I think we should, but companies like Old Navy (and I know they're not alone, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head at the moment) are not helping either.