So Sam brought home a few pictures the other day from two of his classmates. This one is of Sam being shot...on the back is a gravestone with his name on it. The blob is evidently Sam with guts squishing out. I asked Sam what he thought of it & he said the illustrations were pretty good, but he could probably do better. Sigh. So of course we talked about how this wasn't appropriate & what 'Zero Tolerance' means. That it's okay for him to continue to draw Iron Man fighting whomever or monsters with guts...but he certainly cannot draw pictures like these.
This one is from another classmate; this one more obvious with the gravestone & on the back of this paper was a picture of a building on fire. It isn't every day I see a picture with a -read this and you will die substance-I asked Sam what does all this mean? "Oh, "Tom" drew a picture of our school on fire after he killed me." Again, I asked what he thought it all meant & he said, "Well, I think "Tom's" illustration of the flower is a nice touch." So I asked the obvious; but what do you think this gravestone means? Sam looked at me with almost a "poor naive mom" look, Uhm-he shot me with his gun, killed me, buried me and then set the school on fire." Again...SIGH. He thinks it's funny & doesn't feel threatened; but I don't like it and it's freaking this mom out...even if only a tiny bit. Sam and I talked about why this probably isn't appropriate in schl & how it makes adults uncomfortable. So I calmly called the school & told them of my concern...she seemed a little puzzled as well as to why two separate children are drawing pictures of Sam dead with personalized gravestones ....AND that one has the school burning down. Hmmmm. Boys will be boys right? Boys talk about death and killing and guns-right? Do they? I don't know. Mine mostly talks about Superman, Iron Man, Alien invasions, creating potions and notions as a mad scientist someday. Occasionally there is a bloody vampire..., but he doesn't show me pictures of his friends with gravestones after he has shot them. Maybe this is normal. But for real...Yikes! The school had said, perhaps there is something these two children are watching on TV that has encouraged this latest rash of gravestones and death. Makes sense to me; does anyone listen to PG-13 guidelines anymore? Did everyone forget that these kids are in first grade and perhaps don't need to watch adult shows with adult themes?! The recent remark of "when I was a kid" & about how 'every non-nancy boy' played with guns and we didn't end up killing each other... & how Amy is probably overreacting...unfortunately doesn't apply anymore. Or maybe 'they' are right & this was just a fluke. Maybe these boys were all just talking about killing each other, spilling their guts out, burying their friends and then setting the school on fire; that's probably it & I'm probably just overreacting. Regardless; I'm glad I called the school & I'm glad they are aware. God help me AND Sam if he starts drawing his friends dead, in the ground, and then setting fire to the scene of the crime.
