My sons say they were just horsing around when Jack, 6, "accidentally" elbowed 4-year-old Ben in the nose, causing blood to spurt and tears to flow. When they play, somebody has to be The Bad Guy. And in our house, that means somebody always gets hurt.
Not that I know where they learned to pummel each other bloody. I go out of my way to shield them from toy guns, rough contact sports, and violence on TV -- I'm trying to raise kids who hug, not hit. My boys do have their tender moments, but even though I buy blocks instead of bows and arrows, they get aggressive sometimes. And they're not the only ones.
"My son turns everything from Styrofoam to Legos into a gun," Colleen Hendrzak of Middlesex, New Jersey, says of Jack, 2. "But we don't have any toy weapons in our house, and my husband isn't a hunter. I don't know where this obsession is coming from."
Diane Benson Harrington is the managing editor of Freelance Success, a newsletter and website for writers. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
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