The world is a dark and scary place to raise kids with a few black and white truths and a lot of gray fuzzy lines. This inevitibly leads to many mommy vs. daddy debates on a plethera of little issues. Ones of these issues, in our house, is what we watch.
We don't have TV, but we do have netflix. When Gideon watches something on it, I usually choose something like "Super Why", "Veggie Tales", or "Thomas the Train", with the occasional movie. John likes to watch superhero cartoons with him and the latest obsession is "Ironman". Now, at first, I just embraced how adorable it was to see them snuggled up on the couch entralled in the latest episode, but threw on the brakes when I heard him talk about killing things.
It started with a simple statement of killing his sister because she had his car! :-0
...What?!.... I mean... What?!.... Did he really just say that!?!?!?!
Answer: Yes, yes he did.
I simply said
"Killing is bad! Don't say that!"
He looked at me, puzzled and said
"But.... Ironman kills bad guys..."
URRRRCH! Brakes time!
"No, Gideon. No killing!"
I then proceeded to call His father, trying my best not to overreact.
He picked up the phone
"Yes, Honey?"
"Hi. No more violent shows!! I just heard my baby boy talk about killing!" (I failed at not overreacting, as you can tell)
"What? What are you talking about?"
This is where I proceeded to tell him the story after calmly listening to my histeria, he responded as the Mr. Cool guy he is.
"Hmm. Well I, clearly, need to have a talk with him, but Melissa... he doesn't even know what 'killing' means. It's a word one of his friends taught him and all he knows is that it refers to 'getting the bad guy'".
I listened, knowing he was right, but still feeling emotional and protective.
"...but... I don't want him to be violent, or think violence is OK."
"Well, it's part of being a boy, but I will talk to him before watching it with him again."
So let's take a minute and fast forward to later that evening...
John came home and was rough housing with Gideon. Then Gideon said something about killing the bad guys, and John calmly looked at Gideon and said
"Good guys don't kill. They beat the bad guys and then take them to jail."
Gideon thougth about this and said,
"What about me? I wanna kill bad guys!" Then, John, desperately trying to break through, said,
"No, we beat them up, but we don't kill. Killing is bad." So, Gideon said,
"But I don't like bad guys!" Sighing, John retorted with
" That's why we take them to jail, Gideon."
This time there was a long sad pause in which he hugged his daddy close looked up at him earnestly and said,
"...Wanna kill wif me?..."
At this point, we both laughed, because of how pitiful he sounded. He was just so confused. It will just require coninuued explanation as he gets older and understands what it means to die which is vastly beyond his understanding, at this point (well, beyond squishing the occasional bug).
It's so hard to figure out where the line is drawn between "typical boy play" (i.e. cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, etc) and the seeds of violent thoughts and behaviors. I guess that's where the vast amounts of explanation comes in.... maybe I'll take him to the police station and introduce him to some "everyday superheros"
I think my response just would have been
ReplyDelete"Well your baby sister is not a bad guy, so we don't kill her." Then I would have attempted to explain what happens when you die, which would have probably went far over his head.
I used to tell my family I would kill/shoot them (ironically my mom didn't really let us watch violent cartoons, I'm just nuts). So my dad took me up to the middle of no where after Halloween and shot a pumpkin while I watched. Then I quit saying things like that. I didn't really get it until I saw it.