Do children need to play war?

Children have played, are playing and will probably continue to play war as long as it exists in the lives of adults. The game of war, like any role-playing game, gives communication skills, develops the imagination.

The game as a preparation for adulthood teaches you to defend yourself, regardless of physical form. Even a boy who is not fit for military service wants to feel like a winner.

The game of war provides an opportunity to express negative feelings, resentment and aggression in a socially acceptable way. But war is still not football. Children’s games of war should not become a future threat of real massacres. Children are our future… What?

From observations in my office

History №1

A boy of eight years old came to me with his mother. The conversation suddenly turned to the topic of war. The boy really wanted to tell that he would like to be a soldier and take part in a real war.

– Why? I asked.

The soldiers wear nice uniforms and they know how to march.

But the war doesn’t look so pretty at all. Soldiers go off-road, along shell craters, in rain and slush, they carry a heavy burden, their uniforms are saturated with mud and sweat, and after the battle – with blood. The uniform is often from someone else’s shoulder, with bullet holes.

Mom looks confused, the child is surprised, he never thought about this side of the war. Apparently, my mother didn’t think about this either, paying “due attention” to patriotic education.

History №2

At the consultation, a boy of 9 years old, a regular client. The stated problem: fears, insomnia, explosions of aggression at home, and at school he is an outsider.

Drawings exclusively military content. Requests to draw something else do not work. The drawings are sloppy, filling the entire sheet, the color of the drawings is black, with red flashes of fire and blood. To the question: “Would you like to see a real war?” answer: “Yes.”

The child’s psyche does not perceive the word “death”

It seems to the boys that war is to pass in a beautiful form through a foreign country, killing certainly stupid enemies, forever winning honor, love and glory.

And then march in a beautiful formation along the main street, with medals, and so that children and grandchildren would be proud of you. Military affairs seem simple, not requiring exhausting training. It would be a weapon. For example, the treasurer’s sword donated by Baba Yaga.

In textbooks, films and on billboards, the heroes are in beautiful uniforms with medals and banners. It seems that military science and military science are much simpler than all the others.

However, raising real men with simplistic patriotism is one of those dangerous simple answers to complex questions that have led to great tragedies more than once.

About how people slept at their machines, not leaving work day or night, about how they left very young children at home alone and went to work – and how badly it sometimes ended.

We forget about many familiar items, such as medicines and hygiene products, which are not available during the war. Finally, we are not talking about inevitable defeats.

The horror and unnaturalness of war remains a trauma that participants in the events are afraid to remember; they prefer to tell the next generations about exploits and victories.

Is war the main business of men?

Making war the main cause of mankind, we devalue life, destroy the meaning of a peaceful life with love, creativity, poetry and music, with the upbringing of children, the construction of beautiful and convenient cities. Scientific discoveries, spiritual insights, great books change the world no less than wars.

To limit the whole variety of possibilities, meanings, values ​​of life to military discipline and military prowess would mean devaluing the inner world, the creative potential of people who are not inclined to kill or who are not healthy enough for military service. In the end, it devalues ​​military exploits too. War has recently become more and more often called “war”, especially among children.

The fashion for power and dominance appears in a problematic society and a problematic family. This is a dangerous symptom of the militarization of consciousness. Games and toys are an integral part of a child’s life, his main occupation, a way of learning. I think that few people will argue with this.

Education starts at birth. As soon as a child is born, we hang bright rattles in front of his still closed eyes. Necessarily bright, I have not seen black and white rattles.

After a while, we provide him with soft toys, so that sometimes they are a little substitute for the warm and soft hugs of his mother. I have not seen children who have never had a favorite soft toy.

Here boys and girls are unanimous. Finally, the child enters the children’s group or goes to the playground with his own set of favorite toys.

And here you can hear: “Why did you take the doll, this is for girls” – this is how sex education begins. Girls – saucepans and dolls, and boys? Well, of course, cars and toy weapons, shooters, slingshots, swords, soldiers. Let them learn to be real men!

First call: being a man means getting involved in male aggressive activities. And for some reason it is more honorable than girlish games. Why this is more honorable than the activities that the boy observes daily at home is not yet clear. Perhaps it is, if all-powerful adults think so.

A child will learn to think critically only by the age of a teenager, and not everyone will master this skill. Many adults remain suggestible, taking a lot on faith, because “everyone thinks so”, “it has always been like this”, “it is customary”.

Gender exclusion

In fact, the boy is not averse to bathing a naked man, and cooking soup from leaves, and sculpting a cake from sand, playing shop, handling a vacuum cleaner – this is the surrounding reality, which is interesting to understand.

Dolls are like a baby, you can be friends with them and study your own body. “Girl toys” are attractive because they help socialization in the familiar environment of the family.

A little more time passes, and the usual activities of his mother and teacher, which he observed from birth, which he had previously tried to imitate with great enthusiasm, turn out, in the opinion of adults, to be something unworthy of a real adult man.

But why is not clear, and besides, it does not agree with the need and attitude to be kind and loving, an assistant to mom. As a result, opposing attitudes introduce an alarming dissonance, a fear of not meeting the expectations of adults and the image of a man that they ask.

Then the school will begin to take care of patriotic education, which too often comes down to pride in military victories. At reading competitions in schools and districts, 90% of poems about the war are heard. This is a winning option. For some reason, educators do not find opportunities for patriotic education in images of peaceful life.

Beautiful shape and weapons become more interesting than dolls. The boys play war and draw war in black and red. Together with the colors of the rattles, the feeling of a bright, benevolent world disappears.

To be a man is to be strong. “A coward doesn’t play hockey” as if everyone else is required to play so as not to be a despised coward. As if you can’t prove masculinity with anything other than playing hockey.

how to play war?

Forbid boys to play war? First of all, this is impossible. War games develop dexterity, are usually mobile, promote male friendship and socialization.

However, boys need to understand that a real war is not a fun ride, but a terrible crime that should not happen … Children learn life in the game, they must know the value of life, first of all.

The interest in military toys in the post-war period was understandable. But then, I remember, in our then crowded yards they began to play bast shoes and rope, Cossack robbers and, of course, mothers and daughters, where boys who learned to be dads were accepted, they certainly went to work.

They played very passionately. Children’s dishes, nudity in baths, simple dolls wrapped in pieces of cloth… A child learns life in the game, won’t the ability to be an understanding, affectionate and caring father, husband, friend come in handy for him? A doll that looks like a child brings up tenderness, but what feelings does a weapon bring up?

But toy pistols and sabers do not have to be exact copies of real ones. In this sense, the ones carved by the pope from the plank were more useful. They developed imagination more than aggression, and kept the warmth of their father’s hands. The main thing is that the target of a toy gun should never be real people.

I would advise never to buy armored vehicles and tanks of large size, made in detail, and weapons that can cause a feeling of real superiority over the “enemy” in the game.

Once, chess was brought to my office, where instead of the usual chess pieces it was proposed to play with armored personnel carriers, tanks, planes and soldiers. The game terrified me. The sense of noble intellectual rivalry has gone from it.

Many generations of boys played with traditional tin soldiers. Toy soldiers, usually depicting two armies, create opportunities for historical reenactments, while lining up toy armies develops leadership qualities.

If there is a cult of strength in the family, if a doll in the hands of a boy causes a contemptuous comment, and a gun aimed at a person or an animal causes an approving exclamation, the child will remember what a “real man” should be like. When conversations in the family are saturated with aggression and the search for enemies, the child learns not to defend, but to attack.

In my memory, there is also a dad who taught his 8-year-old son to shoot a shotgun like a “real man”. It turns out that a real man is only one who knows how to shoot. This is especially dangerous in a country where it seems very problematic for a child to realize his peaceful abilities at the proper level.

Of course, it is not the toys themselves that will bring up cruelty and the cult of strength. This can happen if the rudeness of domestic communication, contempt for intellectual work and humanitarian values, which are declared weakness, are added to the imposition of games “for boys” and power sections.