I don't approve of violent toys, I won't allow them in my house.

The Boy was given some Playmobil pirate toys for his 4th birthday and I removed the swords, guns and canons before they were passed to him.

Am I over-reacting? Some may think so and that boys will be boys, I disagree.

I read a recent post about how we should allow children (boys in particular) to play with guns and swords as it allows them to process what they've seen in real-life or on the television. Why would my son see these? I don't have non-children's television on around him (apart from The One Show occasionally) and actually he doesn't like any form of malevolence or bad behaviour and asks me to turn it over.

I especially don't have the news on when he's around, and in fact why would I want to watch it anyway? It is full of death and destruction, wars, violence or critical analyse of a celebrity. Hardly the world I want to show my son, not what I want him to grow up in.

I can control that, yet what I can't control is what he sees in a supermarket or newsagent. I can't control the bloody images of dictators hanging or mutilated in death. I can't control the tabloids showing a man with blood-drenched clothes and a machete in his hand who has just beheaded another human being. And I can't control the thought processes that are then inflicted on my child and the nightmares that he then suffers.

Why is is necessary to show such graphic images?

OneDad3Girls has created an e-petition to ask the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to force change. To stop Newspapers from being allowed to print graphic images that can easily be seen by young eyes. To protect our young.

Please sign it here, it takes 20 seconds.