Parenting lessons: guns
I'm going to take a break writing about my new life in Tokyo to share a parenting experience. When Kinori was born, Yuriko and I had to decide many things about how to raise him. One of my contributions to the mix was our stand on guns. I felt that popular American culture desensitized kids to violence and made guns seem glamorous and fun. Kids, particularly boys, shooting for play was just a nightmare to me. So, I just said no to guns. No toy or real guns in my house. No way. Hah! Everything became a gun. Sticks, lego, everything was held to shoot humans, animals, walls, bikes. Bang, bang. But, I held fast, I was not going to buy any toy guns no matter how much he pleaded. Then he reached an age where he started getting his own money. Our rule was that if it's your money, you can buy what you want with it. That's what puts the "your" into "your money". There came the toy guns. What's more, he got into paint ball, so his guns could actua...