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My son has just recently started getting birthday invitations from his friends at school. I honestly didn’t realize just how many people throw birthday parties for kids this young until he collected about 15 invitations within one school year. To be fair, I’ve told him that he can’t go to his friends’ birthday parties until he is six because that is when we are going to have the first “friend” birthday party.
This morning I got online and did a little browsing to catch up on what has been going on around the country and came across a tragic story out of Kentucky. A little five year old boy received his first gun (yes, I said gun) for his fifth birthday. He got the gun to play with when his mom stepped outside for a second. That’s when it went off and killed his two year old sister.
My heart breaks for this entire family, especially the mother. I cannot imagine what she is going through because I know that if I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for stepping outside or leaving a loaded gun where my son could get to it. While this story is incredibly tragic and heart wrenching, to me, it brings up the bigger issue of giving inappropriate gifts to young children.
I come from a small farming town where young kids are given dangerous toys at a young age, so this isn’t an issue that I’m not familiar with. A lot of my friends were given “toys” for their birthdays that had the potential to hurt them or someone else. Things like fully powered four wheelers, sling shots, potato launchers, guns and other similar items were often given as birthday presents. And, until I became a mother I didn’t …