Toy soldiers for a 3 year old
Yesterday when I picked up my kids from pre-school my son (who is three years old) was really excited to show me the surprise gift he had won during the pre-school Halloween party game of musical bumps. I was thrilled for him until he rushed to his drawer to show me the prize of…. a bag of 100+ toy soldiers.
Call me a middle-class softie but I’m quite keen for my little ones to be blissfully ignorant about what guns, soldiers and wars are until they have the capacity to understand. Given that their favourite story tape in the car is still the Teletubbies I am doubtful that they have reached this level of maturity just yet.
I’m really surprised that an educational establishment felt it appropriate to give such a toy to such a young child and I now feel in a slight predicament as to whether I should mention anything to the pre-school carers (who are all absolutely lovely).
As we walked out of nusery with me exclaiming ‘How wonderful that you won a prize!’ to my thrilled child I thought to myself ‘I’m probably just being oversensitive and besides they’ll never know what toy soldiers represent at this age’. As soon as we got home the two kids opened the packet and only moments later I watched them play with two soldiers each simulating stabbing one another with their guns shouting ‘I KILL YOU! I KILL YOU! I KILL YOoooooU!’.
Hmmmmm. Nil points awarded to the ‘Send your kids to school’ side.