I have other mottos, many, many other mottos, but 'say what you mean, and mean what you say' is today's 'theme'. (Yes, OK, thank you for pointing out there isn't usually a 'theme' and I just ramble from one topic to another without rhyme nor reason)
Hypocrisy, there's a lot of it about and I don't deny I fall under its evil spell from time to time. But by and large I try my best to steer clear of it, hence the blog name, i.e. .....with due respect to whoever I'm about to p*** off, I'm just saying what I mean!!
Let's take guns as an example. I abhor warfare and violence, full stop. However...
"Oh, you let Daniel have a gun?! Well, I'm a pacifist and I don't let my children play with guns," a fellow mum told me many moons ago.
Her son was eyeing my son's new Nerf N-Strike Elite Alpha Trooper Blaster with what I can only describe as pure lust while his mum made me feel like had a dinner plate-sized swastika tattoo'd on my thigh.
The thing is this; some kids will be 'into' guns, others won't. And one thing is certain, children who play with guns won't automatically join the armed forces (if that's the concern of anti-toy gun mums) and I'm fairly certain most won't become gun-toting mass murdering lunatics either.
IT'S A TOY!!!!! I'M not being a hypocrite, I don't like racing cars either but I don't stop my son having dozens of them to race across the laminate in the kitchen.
My elder son showed no interest in guns whatsoever, in fact, unless it was football-shaped and, actually a football, he wasn't interested in anything much, oh, apart from football, did I mention that!? I don't like football much either but what's a girl to do, force her boys to play with Barbie and make-up? Well, actually Daniel did go through a doll phase and I was chuffed to bits!!
But now little Daniel has moved on and owns a small arsenal of plastic guns which fire sponge darts. And my goodness me, he's such an amazing shot, if I youtubed it would go viral like a dancing dog.
So, a keen eye and steady hand working in perfect harmony, check. Skills that will come in handy when he's performing heart surgery on babies I'm sure.
Oh, and imagination. When Daniel hasn't got weapon handy for playing cops and robbers, he'll make one out of Lego, or, let's face it, two fingers and a thumb trigger will do!! He's doing the gun thing in a make-believe environment, he doesn't really want to kill his brother (well, OK, maybe sometimes, especially when they're on a shared Minecraft server and Teddy lets lava destroy the world Daniel has taken three days creating).
I'm just not sure that suppressing a child's 'urge' to play with a toy gun when his friends have them, is the way forward. But hey, this is from the woman who inadvertently yanked her son's front tooth out (see last blog) so maybe I should slither down off my soap box and shut it.
And the 'pacifist' mum? I always thought her energies would be much better placed stopping her husband playing Call of Duty on the X-Box in front of the kids.
And......just one more thing.
Today, I walked into a hail of (imaginary) bullets streaming out of my front window and blasting unsuspecting birds out of the sky. Daniel's 'gun'? A machine gun, he told me, or, in actual fact, the empty box which had contained the three juggling balls I had bought him for Christmas.
I rest my case.
Well, until I pen the next blog, and then I'm sure my case, regarding some other noteworthy issue, will be re-opened.
Well, until I pen the next blog, and then I'm sure my case, regarding some other noteworthy issue, will be re-opened.
