Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

Boys like things that go “boom”.  They delight in being implements of destruction, facilitators of collapse.  They love playing with swords, guns, boxing gloves, maces, crossbows, rocket launchers, tanks, and air-craft carriers – preferably the real thing.  Boys play with dangerous things and involve themselves in reckless activities.  There is a good reason why they do it, too.  According to evolutionary biologists, our brains at birth are almost identical to those of Cro-Magnon man.  Boys are hard-wired to engage in risky behavior because it prepares them for the difficult lives our distant ancestors experienced.  It’s one of those leftover traits like vestigial tails and body hair.  Trying to squash those tendencies in just a few generations has led to an epidemic of boys who can’t live up to parents’ expectations.  They are labeled hyperactive and are prescribed drugs.  Kids, especially boys, need free time, sports, space to roam and yes, dangerous looking toys that stimulate their aggressive tendencies.  Without an outlet boys become depressed and anti-social; that’s what psychologists say, the ones who don’t over prescribe ADHD medication.  I believe them.  In the spirit of aggressive play I’ve thought of a few things boys do to blow off steam and why we shouldn’t stop them.

Guns

Banned XBox Commercial

 Remember being a kid and playing with toy guns?  I do.  They were realistic looking, too.  I pretended to be a spy, a commando, a cowboy or whatever.  Anybody who has kids knows the imaginations kids have; it’s inspiring to watch.  Somewhere along the way toy guns changed.  It was in the late 80′s that government started regulating how realistic toy guns were permited to look.  First they put an orange marking on the gun barrel, and kids painted over them.  Then they started making the entire gun a neon color.  Well, someone thought that wasn’t far enough.  Now, go and try to buy a toy gun.  They’re all crappy alien looking things.  That’s pretty bad.  Now we’re hearing stories out of kindergartens and elementary schools that have actually banned making a gun with one’s fingers.  Our nanny-state has decided that little boys are too violent and need to be tamed.  Enter the medicating of our children. What are kids supposed to do?  Great imagination can only go so far.  It seems government and uptight do-good parents have taken all the fun out of being a kid.  We can blame the media also.  A few toy handgun accidents and we suddenly all have to pay.  Bah! 

Sports

Our ancestors played sports as a way to hone their fighting skills.  They played them as rights of passage and as group bonding exercises.  There was a time in this country when kids participated in pick-up games.  These were games that kids improvised themselves.  They didn’t know it, but they were engaging in peer bonding through the act of organizing and executing the game.  I haven’t seen a spontaneous game of anything in ages.  All I see are organized league play events where everything is controlled and injury is minimal.  Kids aren’t allowed to cheer and taunt the other team.  They have to sit quietly and wait their turn at bat.  Boys these days look more like robots waiting for an assignment than anxious kids, desirous of their opportunity to shine.  For this we can blame idiot parents who don’t realize the meaning of sport.  Yes, it is supposed to be competitive and someone is supposed to lose.  It is not, however, parents’ relived failed childhoods.  Allow kids to have pick-up games without involvement from stupid, overweight, failed, obnoxious parents.

Backyard Adventure

Stupid                                                                          Not Stupid  

Walk around any suburban neighborhood and count the number of store bought, pre-fabricated play sets.  It’s maddening because it’s yet another way that parents have robbed their kids of their imaginations.  My dad, way back when, built me a backyard play house.  I think he saw something similar to it in a magazine and said to himself, “I can do that!”.  I participated in it’s construction (well, I stood around and watched and brought hammers and snacks).  The thing did not come in a box.  My dad went to the hardware store, bought the wood he thought he needed, cut the wood, nailed and screwed in the joints, drilled the holes, and sanded and stained the wood.  I watched him do it, and I remember being fascinated that something so cool could be created right out of someones head.  What will kids these days have to look back on when their fathers die?  The IKEA play set that he spent 20 minutes assembling with a hex-wrench?  The fancy fort that was delivered and assembled by professionals?   Modern play sets leave nothing to the imagination and are travesties of father/son bonding.

Exploration Adventure

The backyard is the starting point of adventure, not the end of it.  Suburban life has inhibited our abilities as parents to allow boys the space they need to explore.  There is traffic to worry about as well as very little green space.  The suburbs these days are nothing more than massive land development projects.  We live in the drab, lifeless, boring suburbs where minds and spirits are crushed by the weight of conformity.  We reside in massive houses on tiny lots where people stay inside all day watching TV, being soothed by air conditioning.  Kids need freedom, somehow, to explore a unique environment.  Parents can take the time to go on camping trips, or go hiking at a national park;  something that is new and fresh and that stimulates a child’s sense of adventure.  And, as boring as the suburbs are, there are, nevertheless, kids there to play with and with whom to explore.  Push the kids outside beyond their backyard.  Have an adventure.  Boys need that, that trial, that expectation of a quest.  From where is our society going to get our Christopher Columbus’s, Marco Polo’s, and Lewis and Clark’s?  From the suburbs where the biggest adventure possible is navigating successfully out of the division?  Me thinks not.

Boys are different.  They are hard-wired to be dangerous and adventurous.  Our ancestors relied on those instincts for survival.  Modern boys are not much different than our ancestors.  Although some of those traits are not as necessary for survival as they once were, they can not be put away into cold storage without consequences.  The bit and bridle society has placed on boys (girls have similar issues too) is causing an epidemic of lost boys who don’t fit in, kids on prescribed medicines which, supposedly, manage hyperactivity.  We are creating a generation of zombies and drug addicts.  Children who don’t find an outlet can go nuts (that’s a clinical term).  They’ll turn to anti-social behavior as a release.  Give them something constructive.  Allow them freedom.  The results will be boys growing up the way boys should.  Yes, Dirty. Yes, bruised.  Yes, sometimes lost.  Also strong and confident in their abilities.

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