Getting kids to share | ExpatWoman.com
 

Getting kids to share

184
Posts
EW NEWBIE
Latest post on 19 March 2011 - 12:50

My 3 year old is getting worse and worse in sharing. When she was baby, she shared absolutely everything when a guest came. However, since my no2 started growing up, she hates sharing. Every time my no2 plays with a toy or wears a nice hair band/hair clip, no 1 will come and grab it off her. How do I get her to share? I bought seperate toys for them, but no2 always wants to play with whatever no1 is playing with. She is too young to understand her toy and elder sis's toys. How do I get the elder one to be not so posessive and share? How do I deal with her hitting the LO or taking the toy away? I would take the toy away from no 1 to punish her, she will be sad for a while, then do it again after 30 mins.

1861
Posts
EW EXPERT
Latest post on 19 March 2011 - 21:48
Oh, sharing is difficult! I have a theory that even adults don't really know how to share - we just don't want the same toy with quite such passion, and if we do, we just go and buy one for ourselves! With DD, I instigated early on "if you want to play with DS's toy, give him something else to play with", so it was more swapping than sharing, but the result was the same - 2 happy children. This worked really well - and still does, to a certain extent. Now that DS is old enough to know his mind and big enough to enforce it, DD doesn't get her way quite so often, but I've used that to instil another life lesson (apart from "don't do that or he'll hit you!"), which is "taking turns". Nursery is also teaching her about taking turns, so she seems quite happy with that. As for hitting, that, I'm afraid, gets me coming down like a ton of bricks, regardless of the cause or situation. Hitting is not acceptable under any circumstances, so whatever form of discipline you do (we do Time Out), then enforce it then. In fact, it's often quite a handy way of enforcing the sharing/swapping/taking turns lesson, because LO can only go back to playing once s/he's understood that sharing/ swapping/ taking turns is the only way to have fun! If the toy is snatched, I give it back to the child it was taken from, addressing the snatching child and saying, "no, X was playing with that. Bring him another toy to play with if you want it/ it's his turn at the moment". However, if the situation deteriorates into both children crying/ screaming, then the toy is obviously too much trouble for either of them, so I take it away and introduce them to something they can play with together.
 
 

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