All My Children

Girls are as subject as boys to all kinds of frustrations, very much including sibling rivalry and anger at their parents, and so it would serve them equally well to be able to discharge their anger through symbolic play, as with toy guns. Furthermore it would prevent their feeling frustrated because an important type of symbolic play available to boys is not available to them. By playing with guns they too would get things out of their system. They would realize that boys are not advantaged in comparison to girls in this respect.

Often a child’s desire to play with toy guns is mainly motivated by his wanting to be able to protect himself symbolically. If his parents prevent him from doing so, he feels deprived of a chance to protect himself by those who ought to be his natural protectors. And if his parents seriously fear he may become a killer because of these normal desires—self-preservation, ridding himself of hostility, acting out aggression in play so that he won’t have to do so in reality—then their outlawing not only such play but also the desire for it becomes by virtue of their convictions a devastating attack on the child’s own person and an indictment of his present and future existence.

After so much has been said to suggest that parents should not prohibit symbolic play which has such an important role in the child’s dealing with inner pressures, it still might seem necessary to stress that there is no point in forcing any play activity on children, nor in encouraging them, for example, to play with toy guns or other war implements. Whether they wish to do so, and when, should be left entirely up to them, girls and boys alike. But when they wish to engage in such play we should accept it as such: play that is at that moment important to them and that foretells nothing about their future lives. As always, what is most important for the child’s present and future being are the inner convictions of his parents about him, such as that he—whatever he plays at the moment—is a very fine person now, and will be no less fine once he is grown up. More than anything else, this will help the child feel so secure within himself that he will feel little pressure to act aggressively against others.

The more seriously children explore all possibilities which appeal to them, and the more their parents support all such efforts, the better able they will be later on to decide what suits them best. Many children spontaneously limit their own play to one or a few related areas, for a time or even for years. A permanent occupational choice may come out of it, and if so, memories of happy childhood play can add permanent zest to one’s activities. But more frequently a child’s preoccupation is due to the need to work at some problem, and when it is finally solved, the preoccupation vanishes; it has served its purpose. By having concentrated on it, the child seems to have gotten this particular type of activity “out of his system.” Later on, when he has entered an entirely different career from the one his childhood play might have suggested, there will be no regrets, because he will have had his fill of the other activity.

It is often hard to imagine and impossible to predict how a child’s continuing concentration on some type of play can anticipate and prepare him for what seems like a quite different profession or avocation. Only in hindsight can one realize how goal-directed the child’s activities actually were. For example, from infancy onward a girl surrounded herself with a wide variety of stuffed animals. She was inseparable from them, spending her days playing with them to the exclusion of all else, so much so that when she entered school she could work up no interest in learning, not even about animals. When she became a teenager, she carefully kept all of her stuffed toys but shifted her interest to caring for real animals; she then spent all her free time, as well as hours she should have spent at school or doing homework, hanging around an animal hospital, where she soon became a welcome helper. She cleaned out the animals‘ cages and did other menial work she would never have done at home, and she played with and took excellent care of the animals. At that time both she and her parents were convinced that she would become a veterinarian. The parents encouraged the idea, pleased that their daughter was finally occupying her time constructively and preparing herself for a profession of which they (although with some inner reservations) could approve. So she went to college to become a vet. However, when she had nearly completed her studies, she suddenly dropped out of college and returned to her earlier habits, being and working around animals in rather random fashion, though always concerned for their welfare. When thirty, this woman suddenly abandoned her lifelong fascination with, and devotion to, animals; she finally had gotten her fill of them. She returned to the university to become a social worker, and she now concentrated on working with very ill people. Only then did she realize that all her dedication to animals had been a displacement, because until this time she had never trusted herself to be able to care for and minister to people. With animals, she had worked out her anxiety that she was unable to care well for other people.

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