Not just smokin' guns

According to recent British government advice issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, we should be letting our boys play with toy guns at nursery school instead of trying to encourage them into less violent play.

It seems that boys between the ages of three and five have fallen behind their female counterparts and that it is due in large part to the fact that nursery staff try to curb their desire for energetic and boisterous play involving toy weapons. The advice statement goes on to explain that boys who are encouraged to exercise their chosen play will generally be more interested in education than boys who have had their fun stifled.

It certainly makes for an interesting theory but whether or not there's any solid evidence to correlate the two remains to be seen. Having always been against the idea of guns I was never the one to encourage my son to play with toy weapons but as the mother of a boy I found it totally counterintuitive to ban him from what comes naturally in the first place. And boys will be boys, you can ban toy guns all you want but you can't stop them from making gun shapes with their hands or hiding behind the sofa to jump out at you brandishing a toy golf club as a sword.

I have no idea about the connection to gun play and education but with gun crime ever on the increase and governments cracking down on gun control, it's easy to see why, as parents, we want to encourage our sons into less violent pursuits.

Surely, if they're taught from an early age that guns are bad they'll be less likely to be fascinated with them when they grow up ... Or will they?

It's human nature to want what we can't have and some become obsessed with things that they weren't allowed to have as youngsters. Case in point; all the children I know who were introduced to alcohol (in a very controlled way) as early teenagers, have grown up to be a lot more controlled in the way they drink.

Once I turned 14 or so I was allowed, if I wanted to, to have a very watered down glass of wine with lunch on the weekend.

To be honest it was so watered down it couldn't have made a fly tipsy but the very fact that it was treated as no big deal meant that sneaking off for an underage drink behind my parents back never became an issue.

The UK has some of the strictest drinking laws in Europe and yet they have the largest problem with underage (and legal age for that matter) binge drinking.

In comparison, the attitude to drinking in countries like Spain and Italy is much more relaxed and it's not uncommon to see teenagers sharing a drink with their friends and family. As a result, their binge drinking problem is much lower.

The same can be said with most things, if they're no big deal in the first place, they generally never really become a problem. Whether or not playing with toy guns can help our sons to a higher education, I can't say. But allowing them to play with them at a young age could very conceivably lessen their desire to play with the real thing at an older age.

Just a little food for thought ... unless, of course, you're American!