I too am close to being a pacifist but our kids (boy 7.5, boy 5, and girl 2.5) love wrestling, and Nerf swords and blasters. I think it is an important skill to learn how to wrestle without hurting others--best probably learned wrestling with parents (e.g. no hitting in the face or throwing balls in the face, not hitting too hard or with hard objects). Yes, sometimes someone gets angry and there are tears but this happens as often with block and train track building and stuffed animal pretending at our house as with Nerf weapons. Pacifism is closer to a posture of war than many suppose. It involves determined, cagey, aggressive, gritty, persevering, courageous assault. But rather than killing other people, it involves changing minds--breaching hate with love. Think Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gene Sharp. I hope that by also filling kids' minds with stories of what it means to be true, good, and beautiful from good books, they will apply their feistiness to that one day.

Competition is a powerful and needed experience for most people as they grow up. Winning and losing is an important lesson (and not letting initial losses prevent you from achieving eventual victories). Any sport: wrestling, softball, soccer, gymnastics, or chess (!) is about overcoming a foe in a fair way. Whether it's play guns or play karate or strategy war games, they are all extensions of competition. At times in business, education, art, entertainment, science, or any professional field, elements of competition have to be applied. And it's better to do them well than to do them poorly. Some of our tools for honing the competitive instinct include archery ranges, video games with zombies coming at you, and paintball. It's better to learn the rules of engagement in safe simulations like these than to not learn those things at all.

You brought back a lot of fun memories for me, Rachel. When my two cousins (twins) and I would get together, we'd play army with a lot of shooting and running and falling down. Those two guys have grown up to be extremely cerebral and mild mannered, and I think most people would say that I am fairly restrained in my manner as well (the jury's still out on that cerebral thing with me, though). Back in my junior high health class, our teacher talked about the fallacy of gateway drugs because he said if you wanted to you could show that all those drug users started with chewing gum, which meant that all of us gum chewers were in danger of addiction to heroin. Same goes with kids and toy guns. There's no way these are the gateway to deadly violent behavior, as the studies you cited apparently show. I think we all really knew that already too, including the school officials who sent that poor 6 year old home. Tim (timfall.wordpress.com)

I'm quite willing to believe that boys are hard-wired for this sort of thing. My wife is very strongly anti-violence, and as a result, our two young boys had never seen even a toy gun. But when they were three and one, we visited a friend's house for a birthday party, and they spotted a little toy M16 on the floor. My three-year-old immediately picked it up and started shooting his little brother, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. They're a little older now, and have named their favorite games "Rough Tough" and "Bull Fighting", both of which basically involve knocking each other down by running into each other at full speed. But as I watch them engage in this sort of "violent" play (and occasionally partake in it myself), I very much get the sense that it's a very complex and subtle negotiation. They're figuring out how to do it (mostly) without hurting each other or getting hurt themselves. It's a very important set of lessons they're learning.

(We need more than 100 character) In limiting play fighting, we also limit the ability to be a hero. Being a hero was very important to me as a child. There is probably no other area that where play lead me into christian life. But being a hero means giving yourself up for others. So comic books like God's Smuggler showed ways I could be a hero as a Christian. I won't speak for all men, but I at least learned from play fighting that the role of hero is important.

As a former boy, I support the idea that boys should be allowed to be boys (and girls should allowed to play fight if they want as well.) I was very violent as a pre-teen. I got into fights all the time. But I was moving, I was trying to find my place, I was trying to learn how to control myself and my emotions. I have to think that this is similar to other ways that we want to prevent children from learning how to grow up. When we make decisions for our children we take away their ability to make decisions for themselves. I learned how to make decisions for myself and I am an adult that is very much against violence. I am not quite pacifist, but I lean pretty close. There is a similar idea here with video games. It is not quite the same, but most of the studies I have seen seem to indicate that there is very little relationship between playing violent video games and actual violence. In some cases violence is reduced.

I also wonder with Rachel Simko if the environment and context isn't a key factor in how children engage and understand violence and whether or not they grow up to be violent people. Because despite not having the same pacifist leanings as the author, I am highly aware when my children's play turns from good vs. evil to simply mimicking destruction. My husband and I try to help our children frame even their play in terms of good fighting against evil--which in our house, more often than not, means freeing princess leia from the Death Star with everybody fighting their way out with laser blasters and light sabers.

I appreciate all the studies you include in this post, because it's something that I've been curious about for a while. I don't have boys (we're a girl family over her), but my twin nephews are reaching that age where they are picking up sticks and pretending they're guns. There are no play guns allowed in the house, but it just seems to be some sort of innate play that comes out of young boys. So what do you do? My older brother always played with fake weapons -- from guns to swords to bows to whatever -- and he grew up to be one of the most sensitive, empathetic people. It seems that play fighting is not the issue, but probably the overall environment in which one is raised. My parents were very loving people who lived out their Christian faith, and play fighting was just that: PLAY. There was no blurry lines between reality and fantasy when it came to play fighting, you know? But I totally understand our culture's uber-sensitivity. rachel (evenonesparrow.blogspot.com)