Many adults are afraid of boys' play today, believing that the aggression that is so common in boys' fantasies is dangerous and might make them become violent men. This personal reflection describes the importance of multiage play in showing little boys how to become big boys while encouraging empathy and emotional growth in older boys. The author shows how she was able to learn from an incident in which boys were playing a reenactment of a World War II scene. In the interaction, the author's preconceived ideas about what the boys were doing were shown to be inaccurate, while the boys learned that they could talk about the meaning of their play and make compromises to make it more palatable to the people around them. Communication about these types of games, the author asserts, helps everyone in the conversation grow.