My first child was a girl. From the outset she was a dolls and tea sets child. Other children occasionally pressed toy guns on her when she went to play in their houses. Out of politeness she played with them. She had no choice, she felt. And she was always very diplomatic, always fitted in with other children. But she had no appetite for guns or indeed anything boyish.
Her mother gave her a garage once, in order to rectify this. Our daughter was appalled. She recognised, as children do, the ideological premise behind the gift. The garage went in the loft and she went on playing with Barbie.
Our next child was a boy. When he was two we got the toy garage down. He loved it and he loved guns as well. He should have them, I thought. I was forbidden war toys as a child and banned from playing war games. Yet despite paternal prohibition, I pined for guns and played war games incessantly in secret. I didn't want my son having that. Furthermore, despite my fixation as a child, I hadn't gone anywhere near the army when I grew up.
Childhood games don't determine your course in life. My wife, however, thought differently. She didn't want war toys in the house. And when our son wanted to play war, she would always suggest he do something constructive instead. Like making a Lego castle.
But the more she tried to canalise his energy away from death and into life, the more interested he became in weapons and war. Finally, during supper one evening, he chewed his slice of bread into the shape of revolver and shot at everyone with it. That was it. His mother knew then that she was truly beat.
The next day she returned from the local toyshop. Not with a plastic Winchester repeater or a Browning Automatic (for which I yearned as a boy) but with a flintlock revolver with an engraved barrel. Because it was more an aesthetic object than a gun, she explained, it was easier to square with her conscience.
Our son received his gift with delight. But we'd started on the slippery slope. Within months, all maternal opposition crumpled. Uzis and M3s as well as swords and bows and arrows flooded in. For a while, our son and his younger brother (when he came along) played war obsessively.
Then they outgrew this pastime. The guns went away. They rarely came out after that except when the sons of anti-gun liberals came to play. They loved our house. They could play fiendish games of war here, and while they did so, their mothers would mutter "I don't know what's got into him. He's never like this at home."
I would nod sympathetically at these remarks, glowing inwardly with self-satisfaction. The liberal nay-sayers had turned their children into potential warmongers. My sons, on the other hand, whose aggression was tolerated, had eventually lost interest in war toys and games (except when their friends insisted) and now looked set to mature into gentle men. Tolerance not prohibition had proved the better path.
And so I believed until the first born son appeared with a pamphlet from the Army Cadet Force. "I want to join," he said fiercely, "all my friends are."
He'd get to go up in a helicopter, learn to march, and fire a gun, he said. "No," his mother replied flatly. But his will proved stronger than ours. The morning of the open day for potential cadets, I found myself dropping him at the TA centre.
"Ring when you want a lift," I said.
He disappeared into a room where an ex-service man was lecturing boys.
My son rang when it was nearly dark. When I collected him, his expression was doleful.
"Good day?" I asked, as he climbed into the car.
"Rotten. I've been in the TA centre since half eight this morning and I've done nothing. I've wasted a whole day."
"You got to fire a gun."
"For a minute. The rest of the time was marching and regimental history."
Once home I said, "So I can throw away the Cadets consent form? You're not joining."
"Ay."
I was delighted with myself. Everything had turned out right. He saw things my way. Tolerant parenting, one, intolerant parenting, nil.
I opened the stove and was about to lob the form in when he said, "Actually, don't burn it. I might join, you know."
"I thought it was a waste of a day and you weren't going back."
"Yeah, but if my friends do I'll join."
I closed the stove door. So it was lack of mates which was really at the root of his chagrin. Suddenly I saw this wasn't going to be the victory for tolerant parenting I'd assumed. Or expressed another way, whatever you do, whether you prohibit or whether you tolerate, in the end the child will always follow his own sweet way.
