Before I go off on what we are teaching our children and the thoughts of whether we should actually look to celebrities as role models, I feel I should comment on the stupidity of such parents. The news report stated the single parent of this young girl permitted the combat uniform to be worn because the child stated she wished to wear a soldier’s uniform. A four year old child wanted to dress as a soldier. The parent was simply obeying the child’s wants. A parent was obeying the child? This is the equivalent to the old adage, putting the cart before the jackass. Yes, I know it is cart before the horse, but in this case jackass is appropriate. This single parent is a staunch opponent to the current war in Iraq and publicly blames President G.W. Bush and his administration for the 11 September 1991 terrorist attacks. The only baring this information has is that this parent claims to be an opponent of war. Still what was the defense of this adult? My child wanted to dress like a soldier. What could she do but to obey her child?

There was lots of commentary about children want toy guns, parents buy toy guns. That is the way parenting has to be. No, that is not the nature of parenting. In 1972 my father retired from a distinguished career in the U.S. Air Force. In 1988 he retired from a distinguished police career. Other than toy soldiers, mostly Calvary and Indians, a G.I. Joe and Action Jackson, I do not remember guns being a part of my toy chest. Okay, let us pretend that I never asked for such toys. I do not remember ever asking, battles of toy soldiers was forte. Leap ahead to 1986 when my first wife divorced me and I took the role of single parent to my two year old son. Four years earlier I began my own career as a policeman, soldier, in the U.S. Air Force. Guns were then a part of my career life. My son grew up seeing a pistol strapped to my side and often a rifle over my shoulder or carried in my hands, but what he did not grow up with was the toy equivalents in his hands. There is not a glory in the killing of another person. There is no glory in shooting an animal or human. I know there is a lot of pain left behind, as there should be, when a person kills another with a gun.

In closing my message to everyone faced with the same dilemma as Ms. O’Donnell, children will want damn near everything they see but do not have. As a child I often pretended to be the Calvary Soldier but I remember the gun I carried and the uniform I wore were only in my imagination. I do not think less of parents who have the money to buy Battle Dress Uniforms for their children to wear in their play, but bandoleers of bullets over their shoulders… What child thought of that as part of the uniform? If next the child asks to dress as a terrorist suicide bomber, should she be given a vest of dynamite or a match and a shoe? I do not think less of parents who encourage their children to role play, use their minds to imagine themselves as they think they want to be. I do think less of parents who do not add a little restraint to their children. Children playing soldier do not need bullets or grenades they have imaginations.