Sunday, August 22, 2010

killed

Recently we were in the middle of a long car ride when we had an impromptu gun safety class with our three kids, initiated by our almost-four-year-old.  She started us off by saying,
"Daddy, if you are working on your shooting thing and then you are trying to fix it do you think it can go shooting and get you killed?"
So we talked for a while about what those shooting things are (guns!), how they are not just for "fun" (at least not yet), and I veered my dear husband away from talking about shooting people for fun (a la bb guns and paint balling) so as not to confuse the dear children.

They know they are never allowed to touch -- without permission -- what they may see around (which isn't so much any more, if you were reading my blog about a year ago you know it was gun crazy at our house); we talked about how some kids don't follow the no-touching rule and they have either killed other people or killed themselves even on accident.  It was a really great conversation; of course, at least we thought it was.  And it ended nicely on this note, as again, something only an almost-four-year-old could say:
"Daddy, when you were little did you get killed once?"
 Maybe the conversation didn't go quite as well as we thought.  Oh well.  It's a process.

4 comments:

911 and the Randomness.. said...

Aw that's so cute! Yep, a process is about the only word for it. It's great that you are taking the time to do it though!

jediwife said...

Does your husband have a gun safe yet? Mine hasn't bought his yet but I want him to get one.

KD said...

Yes, we have a small gun safe but it's pretty full at the moment so there are some things that aren't in it. They are packed up and put away, of course, and in general our kids are very good about not touching what doesn't belong to them so it's OK for now.

I'll explain what I meant when I mentioned in this post that it was "gun crazy" about a year ago. It was at a time when DH was working nights, and he would usually not shift off the schedule on his days off. So in the morning we would wake up and he would have his gunsmithing workshop going in full force all over the living room floor. (We live in a 700 sq ft apartment so where else would he do it?) So the kids ~ well the two older ones ~ had it drilled into them not to touch any of the things laying around. And now they don't really even seem that interested.

If/when we move to a larger house, I might be a bit more nervous about having things around.... but for now we live in such a small place they can't get away with anything. :)

jediwife said...

oh wow, how do you do it in such little space? JT and I lived in a studio that size when we were engaged and even for just two people it was stifling!