So parenting news is aflutter with research talking about little boys, their genetic make-up, and their aggressive and violent make believe play. New writing posits that this violent and aggressive play may be needed, that boys will process their aggression via this play. But the jury is still out for some educators and parents. The debate is timely for me after a recent weekend with my two little boys and their 4 year old cousin. I must say, I have the experience in observation part down pat. I’ve seen this behavior, yes.
Boys Need Aggressive Make Believe Play
From how I see it, boys may gravitate to aggressive play but as parents, we never have to condone their violent or aggressive actions. I really believe the lines between imagination, play, and the “real world” are often blurred. There are countless examples of children not understanding the consequences of their actions precisely because they are children. If I let my son pretend to kill/shoot/fight, aren’t I somehow complicit in equating a violent response as an okay one?
What do you think? Do you think aggressive, violent play is an essential part of boyhood?
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heather says
As an educator for nearly two decades, a parent of two boys, and the only female sibling of five, I would caution those who equate the physicality of the way boys play/learn with a need for agressive and violent play. My oldest did not play at shooting/killing/fighting until the school years when he was exposed to children whose parents had different styles than mine. The rules in our house are strict; no play guns/swords, no play fighting, no real fighting, no hurtful words – even when pretending. At our house, this even means no super heros. As parents, we can chanel these physical needs in our boys into constructive action, we can make sure their learning environments are suited to the way boys learn, and we MUST teach them sound alternatives to violence. I believe that when we simply accept that boys are agressive, we often ultimately neglect their emotional needs. I will never forget the day one of my brothers came home from football practice and announced he was quiting. When my parents questioned him, he said he just didn’t like hitting his friends in practice. This brother today is a fiercly competative scholar and an exemplary triathlete – both nonviolent courses of constructive action because it was okay as a child to find alternatives to overt agression.
HereWeGoAJen says
Oh, I don’t know. I only have a girl at the moment. But I taught school. We didn’t allow fighting games, but I know they did it when I wasn’t watching. I suppose if we think about it evolutionarily, the human race used to be a lot more violent in order to survive. I wonder if we still had to hunt and defend ourselves like we used to, if maybe violent play would see more natural. And probably be more natural too, as little boys would be pretending to hunt for dinner instead of killing each other.
John G says
This part resonated with me:
“There is no such thing as violent play,” Thompson told LiveScience. “Violence and aggression are intended to hurt somebody. Play is not intended to hurt somebody. Play, rougher in its themes and rougher physically, is a feature of boyhood in every society on Earth.”
Personally, I also look at the way animals play. There’s a lot of chasing, tackling, biting, etc. It might be rough, but it isn’t intentionally “violent”. Young children play the same way.
For a long time, the world was a pretty rough place to live in. A few hundred years ago, being the fastest or strongest kid on the block would have been a lifesaving skill, instead of just something that could get you a college scholarship. While our society may evolved rapidly, our genes, not so much.
At some age, there is a line where the line between rough and violent is obvious and understood, and i think that’s when parents (and teachers) need to intervene.
But i don’t know how i’d survive school these days. I doodled airplanes and tanks all the time. Now you get suspended for something like that.
Viki says
Our boy is a lot like our girl. However the physical aspects of his play are more apparent: 1) A greater proportion of his play is physical. 2) He is more interested in finding and testing his physical limits. Constantly. 3) He doesn’t have caution as much as he has a pain threshold. It takes a lot of patience and tolerance for seeing your kid bruise and bloody himself to raise a boy.
What irks me about these articles is the inherent hypocrisy. As a society, we’ve socialized our children–especially boys–with violent ideation for many generations. Whether a boy heard about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII, has a loved one deployed to the Middle East, or simply watches Star Wars or Batman. It’s impossible to not have your son exposed to war, violence, and aggression in some medium. Kids play with information from their environment. My kids don’t watch TV now. However, most of the 4 yr olds in our playgroup have seen Star Wars, or dress as pirates/ cowboys/ super heroes etc for Halloween. Even at church, the 4 yr old boys pretend to be David slaying Goliath. Having schools and teachers redirect boys’ play strikes me as ridiculous. Yes, we know that being exposed to violence shapes kids brains in ways that leads to violent behavior. However, pretend is also how kids regulate their emotions, process pragmatic rules about their environment, discover social norms within a group. When one of the boys at my daughter’s preschool starts shooting his air gun at others, we say: \Remember, we don’t shoot our friends. Can you imagine another target on the ground?\ I don’t see how he would benefit from scolding or having a consequence for his game.
janine says
Well, I would like to add my voice to the fray.
I was raised with an older sister and a mother that loved me and were very kind to me and a father that was present but that worked very hard–so, I was raised in a girl house. My father was a policeman and we had our share of guns but I was never interested in them.
I have raised three sons almost to adulthood and never thought I would have a gun in my house. I am inundated with them. I didn’t allow my boys to have them when they were little so they made them out of legos, paper towel tubes and their own fingers. Finally, rather than fight the daily battle, I joined it and we talked about gun safety, and never, ever pointing them at anyone, even if they were toy guns.
My youngest two went into boy scouts (something else I never thought I would be part of) and learned to shoot rifles and are both quite good (something else I never thought would happen).
They are very safe and we have no real guns at home just the kind that shoot plastic pellets (airsoft). They like to target practice in the back yard but both do not wish to kill anything. I am a big time animal person and communicated that to them when they were little as well. All three of them interact in a non-violent way with each other but they do get each other in a lot of headlocks and there are a lot of noogies: a non-demonstrative way, I believe, to let your brother know that you love him. No one ever gets me in a headlock, however. Boundaries are well defined here.
My sister never got me in a headlock or gave me a noogie but for my boys it seems to work.
Boy energy, from my perspective, and girl energy do have some differences and for me, I found, that parenting was definitely about setting boundaries but also knowing when I was licked and figuring out a way to take in their interests (which were definitely not mine) and help the with the boundaries around those that were important to me: safety, kindness and caring always being part of the equation.
Barb says
As an animal keeper, I see first hand our male animals act pre castration and post castration and know that hormones has to have a role in our make-up and how we interact with others. Castrated male animals tend to behave more like their female counterparts in play and otherwise.
So why wouldn’t humans play with a more aggressive manner in general as a male and a less aggressive one as a female? Of course there are exceptions and ways in which we teach our children to USE this energy, but I think it’s definitely valid that there is more to gender differentiation than societal roles.
Gabi says
Readers may be interested in “You’re Not The Boss Of Me! The Charms and Challenges of Raising Healthy Boys”. This is interactive presentation is part of the Parent Map lecture series. You can find more information here:
https://www.parentmap.com/lectures/2010-lecture-series-youre-not-the-boss-of-me