Boys with guns: "How I went from 'no way' to becoming an airport security risk last weekend."

“I was a bit smug. My child isn’t drawn to mindless violence. My child is drawn to baking. But when my second son was born, he pretty much emerged from my vagina brandishing firearms…”

The image was shocking. A small boy walking with his family in Martin Place, right in front of the Lindt Cafe, carrying a toy replica of an automatic weapon.

“Oh my God,” I thought, horrified. “What kind of parent would DO that?”

And then I thought some more and realised that kind of parent was me.

“No child of mine will have a toy gun”, I declared 17 years ago. And I meant it, dammit.

I was a brand new parent and I was blissfully deluded about so many things. The idea I would be able to control what my child was into was just one of them. I’m the parent right? My values. My rules.

My first child was a boy and he had no guns. I wouldn’t allow it. This wasn’t a huge problem because he was a kid who was obsessed with cars and cooking. While other 4 year-old boys carried around guns, he carried around a copy of Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess, weighed down with post-it notes marking all the cakes he wanted to make (and eat).

I felt a bit smug about this. No weapons in MY HOUSE.  War and violence are discouraged. I had a friend with a son the same age who tried a similar approach before waving the white flag. “I don’t let him have guns and so he just chews his toast into a gun shape and shoots his sister” she sighed. I made sympathetic noises while feeling morally superior. My child isn’t drawn to mindless violence. My child is drawn to baking.

But when my second son was born 11 years later, he pretty much emerged from my vagina brandishing firearms.

The issue is a common topic for debate. Watch a group of US panelists discuss it below. Post continues after video. 

This is how I found myself last weekend at the airport, trying to hide my annoyance with the security guard who has just confiscated my six-year-old son’s toy handgun. It was hidden in his backpack and he’d only confessed to me nervously as we approached the X-ray machine that he was packing heat. “I’m scared I’m going to get arrested for having a gun,” he said in a wobbly voice.

“Oh sweetheart, don’t be silly. You won’t.” I ressured him. “But why on earth did you bring it?”

“Because you told me I could bring weapons to play with!”

“I thought that just meant your swords and spears!” I exclaimed as some of our fellow passengers began to give us strange looks.

This is where I’ve landed in my life. From NO WEAPONS, NO WAY to this. Disgraced in an airport security queue on the brink of arrest as a suspected terrorist. Or the mother of one.

“What’s wrong?” asked my husband.

“He brought a gun,” I hissed. “A TOY gun,” I clarified for the benefit of those around us in the security queue who were looking suddenly wary.

Deciding that transparency was the best approach in this awkward situation, I quickly took his backpack and removed the handgun, placing it on top of the bag in one of those blue tubs.

The gun was silver and flouro orange and held together with sticky tape. It looked a long way from real. But still. The security dude blanched when he saw it and wouldn’t let us take it on the plane. “Really?” I said. “But it’s clearly fake”. “Doesn’t matter,” he replied sensibly.” It looks real enough.”

As my son fought back tears and other passengers glared at us (with a few sympathetic looks from other parents travelling with small boys) I smelt a teaching moment. “It’s fine to play with toys like this at home in your imaginary games but we really can’t take them out of the house because they can scare people” I told my chastened small boy.

And I think that’s my new line in the sand.  It was a good wake-up call actually, because like so many parents who have so many boundaries over so many years, my position had been slowly eroding. The combination of almost half my life parenting and Third Child Syndrome means that you just sweat the small stuff far less over time. You also have less energy to fight every battle.

It also depends on the child. When my first son naturally gravitated to cars and cakes and never showed any interest in playing pretend, my youngest has always been a very different beast. He is totally absorbed in imaginary worlds. He loves playing characters either from movies or TV shows or from books. In the past few months he’s dived deep into characters as diverse as  Danny Zucko in Grease, Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Bill Murray from Ghostbusters (we’re having a bit of a retro movie phase at our place).  Before that we had Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, various super heroes, knights, explorers and unnamed soldiers wearing combat gear and fake blood.

I was reminded that this is a fairly typical boy phase (and some girls perhaps although not mine) during a recent conversation with a friend who has three kids. Her eldest boy is four and she’s still fighting hard against weapons. My friend is adamant that there will be no guns in her house.

In fact she was a bit pissed off recently when she took her son to a Spiderman party and the birthday boy’s mother was handing out web guns as party favours. “I’m trying so hard to keep him away from that stuff,” she told me with genuine anguish as I nodded and tried to look thoughtful while suppressing a guffaw.

I used to be worried just like her.  I even wrote this post on our parenting site  where I blurted out my fears about weapons. But then one night when my son was about four, he came to me holding my highest, most glittery stiletto. “Mum, you know what this looks like” he asked me. No, what?

“A gun” he said with a grin.

I burst out laughing and that was when I began to see the futility of my attempts at prohibition.

He’s very particular about props and since he was very small, he’s accumulated quite a cache of weaponry. Some of these have been improvised (see: high heeled shoe) and others he’s made himself by co-opting sticks and sticking toy knives on the end of them to create spears. But there are other weapons that have appeared in our house mysteriously. Again, with a third child you tend to pay less attention. Maybe some came in showbags? Maybe some were gifts? I can’t recall ever buying a gun…..oh except for this one time at Halloween when he wanted to be a pirate or a soldier and I found myself at the $2 shop standing in front of the toy weapons. I knew it was a watershed moment. I knew I was being tested as a parent.

And I knew I was going to fail. I stood there for quite some time, wrestling with myself. Eventually, I ‘compromised’ by eschewing all the more realistic looking high-powered weapons and buying an olde worlde pirate pistol. I justified it to my slightly stricken self by noting that it looked obviously fake and very retro. More prop than gun!

But I crossed that line into hypocrisy. I did. And on the other side of my line was a slippery slope into anarchy.

It’s wonderful having a child who is self-sufficient when it comes to occupying himself. Every parent knows this. If a child has an active imagination and can play happily with their cars or doll or tea set or……weapons……than your life is simply easier. It’s a good skill for a child to have and it’s a godsend for a parent who has no time or inclination to be a cruise director.

So when he started grabbing handfuls of his weapons when we went out to dinner or to friends’ houses where there would be other kids, I didn’t think anything of it. Somehow, over time, we became the parents of the kid who carries weapons in public. A little kid carrying a pirate sword through a shopping centre can be a cute and harmless thing to see.

But never guns.  I’ve always been uncomfortable with guns and that’s been amplified into infinity since the Lindt siege and various other terrorist attacks. They have no place in public and I would never buy or allow my child to have any kind of automatic weapon toy even at home. I have no idea how the plastic handgun came into the house and despite his pleas, we won’t be replacing it.

Terrorism has changed the prism through which we now see kids with weapons. Who can forget the image of the ISIS child holding the severed head? Or of other children of ISIS fighters brandishing real guns?

So no I don’t think toy guns should be banned. I do think they should look like toys however, not too much like the real thing. And I don’t think kids should take them out in public let alone to places like schools. Or airports.

And until we have full compliance with those rules in our family, all small boys will be frisked before they leave the house.

What’s your stance on toy guns? 

For more parenting advice…

The only piece of parenting advice: “Don’t kill them”.

5 parenting hacks that will save you time (and your sanity).

The 12 parenting truths I’ve learned from this crazy rollercoaster.