14 DAY TRIAL // Educators around the world have yet to decide whether stemming manifestations and simulations of violent behavior in young boys is the right thing to do.
As children grow, they tend to start imitating violent forms of behavior. This includes simulating gun fights and killing their opponents, and parents and educators have been appalled at this trend for years.
But it's still unclear whether preventing this type of behavior won't do more harm than good. While some parents admit that this behavior is in the nature of things, others feel overprotective of their kids, and go out of their way to stem such behavior.
Even among educators, opinions are split. Some of them have forbidden violent simulations and play in the classroom entirely, and go out of their way to impose this restriction.
On the other hand, other educators believe that repressing this type of behavior, which kids eventually grow out of in either case, could have more severe repercussions later on.
“When you try to ignore it, it doesn't go away. And when you try to oppress it, it comes out in sneaky ways,” says Jane Katch, who has been a kindergarten teacher for about 30 years.
“It is a very strange thing that is happening in our society,” she adds. Katch is also the author of the book “Under Deadman's Skin: Discovering the Meaning of Children's Violent Play.”
“The violence in the media is more and more explicit, and at the same time culture is coming down harder and harder on little boys' own fantasies, which are actually much less violent than what is in the media,” she explains further.
One of the main reasons why boys tend to have their perceived violent play terminated is because most kindergarten educators are women. Less than 2.2 percent of all teachers in the United States are male.
Various authors argue that women are more prone to peaceful resolutions of conflicts, and therefore cannot understand or approve of these types of violent plays.
What needs to be done, experts say, is for scientists to cultivate an understanding of these types of behavior in female educators, which would help them know when things get out of control.
Otherwise, some believe, it may be that teachers inadvertently set the stage for frustrations and other forms of more latent violent behaviors later on in life, LiveScience reports.
“Boys are innately wired for dominance and that is going to affect the kinds of stories they like and the kind of games they play,” says psychologist Michael Thompson, the author of “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys” (Ballantine Books, 2000).