
We know where that problem ends, but it starts somewhere, too. One place to begin to look, at least, is at how our kids—particularly our boys—play, and how they are nurtured (or not), and taught to express their emotions (or not). It is, at least in part, up to us, their parents, to decide whether they are going to be the ones who help repair our society and reorient us (or not). And it begins with the kinds of care and love they receive, the kinds of conversations they are invited into, the kinds of expectations they are given about behavior and relationships.I don’t want to raise Seamus, Madeline, or Rosena in the austere, ripped from the headlines of horror, polemical atmosphere that was the essence of my own childhood. But I don’t want them to get comfortable with killing either.I want so much more for, and from, my little boy than “Pow, pow, yous are dead now!” And that starts with taking the gun or the stick or the rainbow flag out of his hands, sitting him down, and having a hard conversation about what guns actually do to people– and how much killing hurts us all.
Source: Frida Berrigan: “Pow, Pow, Yous Are Dead!” – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics
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