the finger gun...

so there i was yesterday, innocently helping my parents with whatever... and i get a text from a woman i know...

a glorious and beautiful woman, a dedicated mother, with a smile like a spotlight that would normally light up a room.

she was not smiling...

because her 7 year old had been written up at school that day and given detention... the official reason was "inappropriate language" - but the real reason was that he made a gun out of his fingers.

wait, what?

yes, you read that right - the same thing EVERYONE HAS DONE, is now a problem in schools... gone are the days of play, farewell to 'cops & robbers', no more acting like James Bond...

and why?

she was told, "because other students may feel threatened"

WAIT - WHAT??

now, let's look deeper into this....

we can't let our kids play because it's depicting something violent... and that supposedly violent depiction in play could cause other students such mental anguish that they... what?  can no longer function at school? 

do we need to send in counselors?  should we start therapy for the PTSD?

all because a kid made a gun shape out of his fingers??

so here i want to blame the school for being paranoid - but then i have to wonder...

what kind of children are you people raising that we can't let kids play like this any more??

what kind of kids are we raising that an obvious non-threatening play act is now treated like a potential threat?

are we trying to encourage our kids to overthink everything?  do we want them to be afraid of even the idea of something bad??

the drama of play has now become so traumatic that a finger pointed at another student is a problem, what??

...the story, gets better...

my friend later found out that when her child asked why he was in trouble, the educators explained to the SEVEN YEAR OLD all about how sometimes people show up at schools and shoot people, so we shouldn't joke about it.

yes, that's correct... the solution for not letting a child play like he has a gun... was to tell him that people come to schools and shoot people.

i guess the logic here is that we can traumatize one child with reality so that he doesn't risk traumatizing the other kids with play.

ya know... a lot of people don't want to hear my opinions because i don't have kids... because i can't know what it's like to have a child, and i can't know what it's like to have a child in these troubling times.

here's what i know:  if we are raising a nation of people we want to function in this troubling world, we better let them know that life is not easy, and that sometimes things go south, but first maybe we should let them know that it's ok to play.

now many will ask 'where do we draw the line??' and certainly someone will say, 'you can't understand what it's like to have kids that don't understand how serious things are and see them make jokes about it when they shouldn't have to deal with such pain!'

and ya know, i'm not going to say that on some level those aren't valid points - but what kind of world are we living in when a 7 year old child can't play?  he's not supposed to understand - he's SEVEN YEARS OLD, do you want to live in a world where kids can't play??  i get it, you try to keep young kids from seeing violence and sadness, and those things should be taken seriously, but this isn't Columbine - this is a seven year old making a finger gun!

and now you want to raise kids who are afraid of a finger gun?  is that the kind of parents you want to be?  are you proud of that?  i'd like to hope we aren't proud to raise kids who are emotionally stressed at the idea of a finger gun.

because none of us wants to live in a country where our future law enforcement and military is filled with people who as children couldn't handle the trauma of having a finger gun pointed at them.