ABSTRACT
The current environment in which children are growing up is permeated with pretend and real violence: in toys, in entertainment media and technology, in news media, and in many of their own lives (Levin, 2003a). Often children bring this violence into their play and adults have strong reactions to it. It is important to be informed about how adults look at and interpret children’s play with violence in order to make decisions about how to respond in ways that best meet children’s and society’s needs. Looking at Play with Violence
For the fourth time in 20 minutes, 4-year-olds Wanda and Shelley have made a building with large hollow blocks. Wanda carefully crawls inside and Shelley starts to crash the building down with his fists and feet and yells, “Bang, Pow, Pow, Crash.” As he continues kicking and shouting, Wanda, who is now buried under the blocks, yells, “Help me, I’m trapped. My house just blew up on me. I’m trapped. I can’t move. Help, Help!” While the first three building demolitions ended with Wanda “dead” under the collapsed building, this time as she calls out for help, Shelley frantically starts pulling blocks off the pile and shouting, “Don’t worry, here I come, here I come.” Th en he enthusiastically pulls a laughing Wanda out of the wreckage. Within minutes they begin rebuilding again.
Jackson picks up his plastic Tyrannosaurus figure and crashes it into other toy dinosaurs, yelling, “I’m smashing your bones, I’m squishing your eyes, I’m gonna grind you up, I’m gonna suck your blood….” As the Tyrannosaurus continues the attack, Jackson frantically hands a dinosaur to a nearby adult, instructing, “Hold this and yell, ‘Please don’t kill me, I don’t want to die.’” After several more attacks, Jackson has the other dinosaurs capture the Tyrannosaurus in a bloody battle and puts a plastic box over it. Holding a Brontosaurus in his hand, he turns to the other dinosaurs and says, “Th ere, we got it. It’s in jail. It won’t ever get out of there!” (Adapted from Levin & Carlsson-Paige, 2006)
