Jayne Dowle: How my little soldier entered the combat zone

Jack spent £18.99 of his birthday money on Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2 for the PlayStation.

The debate over whether he was allowed what is essentially an illegal game for his age – an 18 certificate, he is nine – has been raging for at least a year, but his father has finally given in.

It has taken a lot of begging (on Jack’s part) and a long lecture on the perils of real-life war (on his dad’s part), but a copy of the game has now officially crossed the threshold.

We are far from being right-on at our house. It’s pink stuff, footballs and The Simpsons over wooden toys and educational puzzles every time.

But Dave, my husband, does have strong views against play-guns and pretend-warfare. Until now, we have operated a kind of informal ban.

I have never quite got to the bottom of his stance, seeing as his mother and several uncles fought proudly for their country in the Second World War, he himself was a gung-ho Boy Scout, and he admits to setting fire to his Airfix model aeroplanes when he was 11 and chucking them out of the bedroom window.

But then again, he came of age in the early 1980s, in leftie Birmingham, and although he never technically signed up to CND, I reckon he was a bit like Neil in The Young Ones. Don’t tell him I said that. I know I’m not supposed to say this either, but personally I didn’t mind about Call of Duty from the off.

I suspect mothers are supposed to have strongly squeamish views on this kind of thing, but then again, we are mothers, not fathers. We know our sons like no-one else.

I still harbour a little fantasy about being a war reporter. And I have sat all the way through The Hurt Locker, the searing drama about the war in Iraq, without having to leave the room.

But even the toughest tomboy mothers don’t fight like boys. I can see in Jack the need to test and prove himself against other lads – real or imaginary. Him and his dad, both being gentle souls at heart, just don’t have the right dynamics for head-locking each other. But he’s a big, strapping lad. As soon as his mates arrive, the trampoline in the garden becomes a wrestling arena. And when his mates go home, and it’s bath-time, he selects a hapless soft toy from his babyhood stash and pummels it on the bed.

To be honest, it’s about time that Jack realised that he can’t win every fight with sheer brute strength.

And yes, I admit, it was the peer pressure thing. I was quite impressed with the way Jack marshalled his argument. Clearly, he had laid awake at night composing a list of all the boys he knows who have already got the game, with elaborations and justifications where he felt necessary… so Joe, his dad’s a fireman and a football coach, Ben, his dad’s a policeman… According to Jack, he would be the only boy in his new class without a copy come September. And remembering only too keenly just how mean kids can be to the “odd one out” helped me make up my mind. There is only so far a parent should go to make a point.

And, given that we all watch the news together and encourage the children to ask questions about the world around them, we can’t really operate from a sanctified moral high ground. When Jack wants to know why British soldiers end up getting blown up in Afghanistan, he doesn’t want another one of his dad’s lectures on the futility of war. He wants to see it, and to some extent, experience it.

Like it or not, modern kids won’t be fobbed off with text-book descriptions. Any teacher will tell you that. I did point out to his dad that this war game does teach the value of teamwork and supporting your comrades, as well as self-reliance and courage. And come on, it’s got to be better for a young lad’s soul than Grand Theft Auto, with its ethos of bling, criminality and nicking cars.

So far, Jack has not turned into a psychopath. But it must be said, his sister, who is only five, did pretend to machine-gun her friend’s dolls the other week. And this from a child – and a girl, don’t forget – who until recently had never even seen a gun in her own home. Nature or nurture? Tricky one to answer that. And it – literally – blows the whole boys-need-war-toys theory out of the sky. So far, thankfully, she has shown little interest in Call of Duty. And for the record, so has Jack. He has apparently passed his “basic training” but last time I looked he had shoved it aside for his favourite skateboarding game.

I have, however, noticed his father taking a rather detailed interest in the box. He has been warned.