TOY GUNS and violent games have no place in children's Christmas stockings.

Director of Youth Affairs Richard Carter and chairman of the Child Care Board (CCB), David "Joey" Harper, who spoke to the SATURDAY SUN in two separate interviews recently, said parents had a sure bet with educational materials that allowed children to manipulate, create and imagine.

Carter cautioned about some electronic games, which he described as "very, very violent and are probably even more damaging than having toy guns to play with".

"The issue of toy guns is one that we as a department are concerned about because it is another manifestation, we think, of some of the things that we can do without in our society," he said.

"By that we're not saying that children should not play and explore the full range of things..., but we found when we did the first toy gun exchange a couple years ago, we did some research that indicated [as well as several pieces of independent research across the world] a relationship between violent toys and engaging in violent type recreational activities and the type of violence that we are seeing among some of our children and our young people," Carter said.

Harper simply said gifts of guns should be "a no-no".

"We do not want gifts of guns. We do not want gifts that will in any way create a problem for the children. It makes no sense giving a child a $500 bracelet when the child does not understand."

The CCB chairman also said there was an increase in the abuse of teenagers at this time of the year, because of their strong desire to have everything that everyone else possessed.

"This causes them to use sex as a currency. We want parents to be vigilant; we want school teachers to be vigilant and we want the police to be vigilant," he said.

Carter is urging gift-givers to think of age-appropriate gifts.

"Given where we are as a society now, and given the fact that violence is one of our primary concerns, we would certainly expect that parents would be thinking about more appropriate things to give their children than toy guns," he said.

While his department is not planning another toy gun drive similar to that of May 2001 when primary school children turned in 5 002 toy guns for educational gifts, Carter said they were thinking of other ways to sensitise parents, the public, children and young people to the issue of violence and how it manifests itself. (DS)