A reader in South Carolina responds to my earlier post on raising violent 4 year-olds:
“…and the violent take it by force.”
Sir — it’s one of the self-defeating notions of modern education: since boys have a tendency towards violence, they are sent a message that there is absolutely no place for it. (The sort of repression “liberals” pretend Christians apply to sex.) The boy, then, comes to believe that violence means crossing a line beyond which there is no propriety or morality at all…but he STILL has his instincts—just no PROPER context in which to put them…and eventually a “gangsta” is equal to a Roy Rogers cowboy in his muddled mind, since neither is a PBS-approved pacifist.
Hence the visiting children at my house who (until corrected by my own kids or myself) often think the obvious style of play with a toy gun is indiscriminate blasting towards everyone in sight. The worst are always the ones who are forbidden all toy weapons at home. (Of course sometimes when their Moms or feminized Dads discover that my boy’s closet is a plastic arsenal which can outfit a squad, a posse or a boarding party, they stop visiting anyway…).
Keep up the good work. You might want to hunt up the G. K. Chesterton essay, “The Terror of a Toy,” which does this subject justice…
