(Two hours of child observation) Children playing Ninja in the park

Yesterday morning I was in Tompkin's Square park watching the children play in the jungle gym and sand. In the sand there was a group of three boys, probably between 5 and 7 years old. I had overheard these boys saying that they were playing Ninja. The kids would lightly hit and kick each other while making loud animated sounds like, " whaa, chop, shwwing," etc. The children would take out fake weapons like swords, nun-chucks, and knives to help kill their opponent.

The funny/scary part of this whole event was that none of the kids wanted to be defeated. After the fighting went on for the first minute the children would say, "You're dead." The other kid said,"No, I'm not." This is when the fighting started to become more aggressive. This all started out as a fun time, but once the kids started challenging each other, it became personal and their pushing and hitting became much more violent. The Ninja game stopped being a game. In each child's eyes I could see a genuine sense of anger, frustration, and aggression. This was not good. Before you know, it one child who was getting ganged up on by the other two, flailed his arms and hit the other kid in the eye. The kid who got hit in the eye screamed, "Mom!! Charlie hit me in the face." Charlie responds, "We were just playing Ninja." He said it like he hadn't done anything wrong. The mother responds, "If you boys can't play nice then you can't play at all."

All of these children looked about the same age, however, Charlie was bigger than the other boys. I don't think that these children had malicious intentions while playing Ninja, but what a light hit is to a larger kid might be a hard hit to a smaller child. This was the case today. Since Charlie was bigger than the other boys and played harder than the smaller kids he could be called a "bully". I don't think Charlie was a bully. He was just playing like the rest of kids.

With my experience as a past camp counselor, I would have had Charlie play with some older kids, who are more his size. This way when he hits someone his size, a soft hit is a soft hit. If Charlie is playing too hard with older boys, he'll probably find out how those smaller children felt when he hit them.

Ultimately boys need to get their energy out and playing Ninja is one of those ways. I don't think that games like this are bad, but they need to be regulated and supervised. Through games like this, boys learn real world problem solving skills that aren't found in math or science text books. I think stopping boys from playing games like Ninja is like telling boys they can't draw certain images in their sketchbooks. Children need to express themselves and if they are told not to do it, that doesn't mean that they're going to stop. Children are smart. If they were told not to play Ninja then they probably would still do it if they didn't think that they were being watched. I say let kids play these games and express their raw emotions. It's better than holding them in and letting them grow into aggressive adults.