GAMES OF WAR

Molly Gunn - 14 Jan 15

Sometimes I think I might be hippy hiding in the shell of a middle class mum dressed in Topshop jeans and Nike trainers.

For starters I’ve always thought it would be fun to live in a commune. Also, I’ve just turned vegetarian for the sole reason I can’t eat animals when I think they are such cool beings. But most of all because I am big on world peace and love.

Paris. Nigeria. Syria. North Korea. etc. There is so much bad stuff going on right now. News of it all makes me feel sad, like billions of other people around the world who value life and all its beauty. War leaves me dumbfounded.

The human body is such an amazingly complex, sophisticated, beautiful thing I’ll often wonder intensely how anyone could injure or destroy another being… let alone on such a mass global scale. Yes, even though my name is Gunn.

This feeling has intensified in me since becoming a mother. I know other mums have said the same thing. Growing two phenomenal beings inside me, has made my empathy and sadness grow tenfold when I hear about bad things happening.

Yes, war is nothing new… but isn’t it tragic when life is so precious? When we watch our children grow from nothing into wonderful beings? When things they do and say on a daily basis are so damn magical? When their bodies have been created to work so efficiently? When their brains go beyond the realms of imagination?

It makes me beg the question how can anyone, ever, anywhere want to harm or kill?

And this is why kids war games don’t sit well with me. While I know loads of mothers say it’s harmless to have your kids running around the house shooting with pretend guns… for some reason I can’t see it that way.

My oldest son Rafferty is nearly 4, and in the last 6 months he has started to do as all little boys do: pretend fight. Not on a big scale. Just occasionally picking up items which he pretends is a gun and shooting us with them.

You know, a roll of wrapping paper, a stick we find in the park, a pen, anything can become a gun. And,  I can’t seem to feel lighthearted about it. It’s like I have a major sense of humour failure when it comes to playing at war. Other than this I would rate myself as a fun(ish) mum. I’m not usually so… anti.

But I can’t be shot by a pretend gun that is actually a ruler, and roll over dutifully and play dead. I don’t want to. I don’t want him to think that that is okay to ever shoot anyone. Even when it’s a game. Even when the pretend gun is an inanimate household object that could do no harm.

Instead it makes me go all serious and think of all the bad stuff going on. It makes me feel that playing with toy guns is another desensitisation of war. Like blockbuster films that see people dying in various spectacular fashion. Or newspapers that focus on the really gory details of someone else’s pain. I don’t think we need more desensitisation, I think we need less.

The answer? Rafferty can shoot me, but he can only shoot me with inoffensive things like pretend ‘jelly and glue.’ I don’t mind pretending that I’m stuck to the floor by sticky glue. I don’t mind that I fall over in a mass of jelly. I don’t mind getting shot in the head with pretend custard.

And Rafferty quite enjoys shooting me with these things, too. Especially if I ham up my sticky end. It’s all very Bugsy Malone.

And what does he have instead of guns? He has ‘Peace Shooters.’ The guns on his lego spaceship shoot peace and love around the world. They make everyone happy. Now, even the idea of this makes me feel happy. Imagine if there were really guns that did this! Imagine if the UK spent our defence budget on Peace Shooters?

This works well in our house… so far. But, I hear you cry – can it last?

Rafferty knows that I object to play-killing, and play shooting, he understands that I’m not big into blowing people up or throwing them in prison. (Although, I’m the first to admit it felt slightly strange when his lego policemen were ‘hugging it out’ rather than shooting each other. George Michael’s ‘Let’s go outside’ video sprung to mind).

But he isn’t yet at school, so his influences will soon extend beyond his family and the village preschool. Maybe his Peace Shooters will be a hit in the school playground and start a trend, or maybe he’ll start shooting imaginary bullets like other kids.

And I know that maybe games of war don’t matter at all.

That maybe imaginary gun fights are completely inoffensive.

After all, my brother had a fascination with knives as a teenager and he is a completely chilled, peaceful landscape gardener whose knife interest was only fodder for a healthy appetite for DIY and home improvement.

I know it might not matter.

I know it is very unlikely that my sons will turn into war mongers.

But I still can’t see the fun in it.

Call me a killjoy. Call me overreactive. Call me a sourpuss. If you will, I’ll take these on the chin.

I’d much prefer Rafferty and Fox to be the next Kofi Annan or Dalai Lama with a mother who relentlessly pushed the peace message onto them, than someone who thought that war was okay.

So, ready, aim fire… Peace Shooters anyone?

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Molly Gunn

Molly Gunn is the Curator of Goodness at Selfish Mother, a site she created for likeminded women in 2013. Molly has been a journalist for over 15 years, starting out on fashion desks at The Guardian, The Telegraph & ES Magazine before going freelance in 2006 to write for publications including Red, Stella, Grazia, Net-A-Porter and ELLE. She now edits Selfish Mother and creates #GoodTees which are sold via TheFMLYStore.com and John Lewis and have so far raised £650K for charity. Molly is mother to Rafferty, 5, Fox, 3 and baby Liberty. Molly is married to Tom, aka music producer Tee Mango and founder of Millionhands. They live, work and play in Somerset.

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