Monday, February 28, 2011

Imperial War Museum

On Friday, I took my son to the Imperial War Museum in London. We had a good day and it was really great to see the exhibits. There were lots of things he was too young to understand though. I could do with going back there by myself. The World War 1 trenches experience was quite unsettling for him, he doesn’t like smelly places and it was a bit smelly and dark and about as realistic as a museum experience of that kind of thing could be – so it had the desired effect of making him think again about what the reality of war really means. He did ask the lady in the shop if they sold any toy guns afterwards though.

I liked guns and war related things at his age. I had lots of plastic and metal toy guns as a child, there were a lot more opportunity to buy toy guns when I was younger. Military themed toys have become less popular in general and while you can still buy military action figures it seems harder to buy toy weapons then it used to be. With my son, we have tried not to introduce toy guns into the house but he just makes them out of Lego instead. With so much glamorisation of war and violence on the TV or in films I don’t know how we’re going to avoid him being exposed. It is worrying but I guess we just have to make sure he appreciates the difference between fiction and reality.

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