Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim-John Payne. This is the fourth and last part of this little series into gunplay and boys. I want to now, as we get into this last part, emphasize again that gunplay has been going on for years.
It's normal, it's natural for little boys to do this. And I don't want to suggest that all gunplay is bad, of course. But what I am suggesting is that there is a point where gunplay starts to become overly aggressive, very competitive, and kind of disturbing.
And you just get this gut instinct that this has all gone too far. Now, in this fourth and last part, I wanted to address the whole question of control. Because one of the aspects that I've noticed around gunplay, and particularly the boys that are drawn to gunplay, I've tried to watch who is and who is not drawn to this.
There tends to be a pattern, not exclusive and not always true, but there tends to be a pattern of kids that get attracted to gunplay and those kinds of kids who are needing to exert control over their environment. Gunplay is really a way of being very, very powerful. Little boys are living in a world of archetypes.
They're living in a world of these images. And one of the most powerful things that you can be if you're a little boy and have in your possession is that of an imaginary gun. It makes you very powerful, and it makes you in control.
And that kind of control is... I've tracked little boys who play with great intensity in terms of gunplay and are not easily redirected out of gunplay. And I've tracked them through the day and through the week, and they exert that kind of gesture of needing to have control in many other areas. If they're in kindergarten, for example, they will often... Again, I want to emphasize not always, but will often dominate the conversation at the snack table.
They will often dominate or have control over high-value toys during playtime. They'll often be the boys... I was watching a little boy like this recently in a kindergarten who, as soon as creative playtime came, raced over, got the dress-ups and said, OK, and he put the policeman's hat on and held the fireman's hat and didn't want to give that to anyone, said, I'm the first boss. I'm the police chief and the fire chief.
I'm the first boss. And then the three or four other boys who came running over, they could be the second boss, and he would then say who the third boss, who the fourth boss was. And one little boy said, well, I don't want to be the puppy again.
And because he had been the first boss's puppy for the last couple of days in playing. Now, this was the very same boy that when they went outside would quickly move into gun play. And my heart went out to this little chap because what he was doing was needing to have more control over his environment.
When I look at children like this and I look at their lives as a whole, they are so helped by having more rhythm in their lives, more predictability. They need to know much, much more what's coming next. If they know what's coming next, if they know when they wake up in the mornings, how they'll wake up and the little rituals that are in their mornings and then the little rituals of getting out of the house and then the rhythms of coming to kindergarten or into the grade school.
And then if the educators are into this and cooperative, more and more predictability that nothing takes a child by surprise. And then when they get home, there's just the way things happen. There's a rhythm and a predictability to what they do in the early phases of the evening and then the way they go to bed.
It's the same story. It's done in the same way. That, for me, is like sole arnica to a child who is involved in a lot of gun play because essentially it's just control-based play.
Guns are just a side product. It doesn't really matter that there's guns for me. I'm not really overly drawn to the fact that it's a weapon.
It's the fact that they're looking for control. And if we give them more rhythm and predictability in their lives, the need to exert that control will start to ease. And I do say that with an unusual sort of surety only because I've recommended this step for boys over and over to even when they're in the early grade school or kindergarten to actually have little previews with them so that before they do go out to play, they have a little preview of what the play is going to be like, what they're going to do and where they're going to play and how they're going to play.
If they're given previews like this and they can plan that they're going to play boats or they're going to dig and make mud pies or dams with the water in the warmer months, if they get a preview and an alternative to how they can play and that preview then settles down the amygdala, it settles down their fight, flight, freeze and flock brain because in that quartet of fight, flight, freeze and flock, what you have is the perfect recipe for gunplay. Do you see it? Fight. There it is.
You're fighting with guns. There's flight. You're running.
You're dodging. Other people are trying to shoot you. There's freeze where you're perfectly, perfectly still and you're dead.
And then there's the flocking and that's unmistakable, isn't it? Where boys are raging around like flocks of destructive seagulls with guns in their hands or wings. Fight, flight, freeze and flock. Now that's all the adrenaline and cortisol that is pumping into a little boy's system.
If their life is extremely unpredictable, children thrive on rhythm and predictability. If they get that kind of predictability and previews, little very, very practical previews of how we're going to play today, then the amygdala, the adrenaline and cortisol can start to calm down and then they can move much, much more into creative play and just drop the sticks or drop whatever they were holding as guns and then start to play in a whole much more creative way where the amygdala in their brain is no longer dominating but the limbic system now is allowed to function and the frontal lobes are now allowed to function because the brain of a little boy is not subjected to, in a sense, amygdala hijack. Because the amygdala will hijack the rest of the brain, the rest of the brain's activities for a little boy.
So that controlling gesture, when we can say to a little one, you no longer have to control your environment, you're good, you're safe, you're secure, then the gunplay likewise does ease. So we've been through now, just to wrap up, these four aspects of gunplay and of understanding gunplay and each of the episodes of these series has given a practical idea of what we can do to heal and bring children back. And what we've talked about is in the first series of imitating that hard and fast and high velocity life and in the second we talked about that supercharged time to play, how kids will try and cram a lot into a short amount of time and how there's a need to give boys more time to play.
In the third of the series we talked about that desperation of connection and allowing more subtle layers of connection to form and have boys be able to see each other not just as aggressive but all the other beautiful layers there are to little boys. And then in this last of the series, just now, we've talked about the need for control and how we can mitigate that and heal that if we have more rhythm predictability in a child's life so that the adrenaline and cortisol, fight, flight, freeze and flock can calm down and then there's this lovely giving way into play and creativity. All right, that's a lot.
I hope you've enjoyed this mini-series and I sure hope that helps us understand, but not only understand but to have some practical ideas of what we can do to help our children and particularly our boys to be more creative, cooperative and just a fuller, richer play life. Okay, bye-bye for now.
