Water Fight

The time-honored summer tradition, the water fight, can be water balloons, water guns, the hose, cups, or buckets – it’s a wide-open field of choices.  That said, even though there is no photo with this entry, I am sure this was a water gun fight with a possible assist from the hose.  We never had water balloons in our backyard because we were afraid the dogs would eat (and possibly choke on) the broken pieces of water balloon.

When I was growing up, my parents were anti-gun.  I was a girl born in the mid-70’s in the northeastern United States, so the absence of toy guns wasn’t unusual.  But my dad took it to another level.  I wasn’t allowed to make my fingers into the shape of a gun and pretend to shoot…that’s just craziness.

Toy Guns

Here is the way I have handled the issue of gun safety with my children. If a gun was clearly a toy, they could have it.  For example, nerf guns and water guns are brightly colored neon with logos and words like ‘super soaker’ printed on the side…clearly, toys. I don’t even know if they sell toy guns that look like real guns anymore – I hope they do not, but regardless, we never had any. 

Real Guns

If you choose to have real guns in your home for hunting or your own self-defense, they must remain locked in a gun safe, unloaded. Store the bullets in a separate location. Put everything out of reach of children.

In addition, please talk to your kids about gun safety. Explain that guns are only for adults and that they need to quickly get away from any kid (or adult) who has a gun. There are still accidental shootings every year. Tell them to come to you or another adult right away if someone has a gun.

Video Games

I know there is debate about the psychological impact of video games with realistic shooting scenarios.  I have strong reservations about these games.  I think, especially for our special kiddos, it is better to do more socially engaging things that do not have violence as the focus.  That seems to be a common sense approach, but you will see that your community of parents may not agree. There may be quite a bit of pressure from your child to be allowed to play these games – it’s harder to avoid than it might seem.  We ended up letting Will (our typical son) play some of these games, but not Michael (our son with autism and developmental delays).

Compared to these video games, a water gun fight is about the tamest form of entertainment you can imagine…I’d say, let them have the water guns!

Here’s the family pool party at which Michael was introduced to water guns: