Daycare told me that when LO sees a baby having fun with a toy, she will rush over and try to take it away! She'll refuse to find another toy to play with.
Any advice on what i can do to help her share or not think EVERY toy is hers?
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DS isn't in daycare but he does the same thing! He's an only child so it's not like I can teach him to share his toys at home.
When we've been with other kids and this has happened, I try to talk to him and tell him, "Jack's going to play with that now, you can play with this instead", etc. The opportunity doesn't come up that often, but if my DS was in daycare I would hope they would help out with this since that would be the place where he would be interacting with kids on a regular basis.
And I think it's completely normal behavior and something every toddler needs to learn. -
When LO is playing we have been consistently taking her toys away from her and playing with it. Or we will ask her to share things. So far she has been really great with sharing - except she thinks it's funny to not share her food. But that she is doing to be silly!
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According to the Honest Toddler... "How is being forced to share not communism"
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For some weird reason, I have really strong feelings about making toddlers "share". I think adults really over-react in most situations, when toy-taking is very developmentally appropriate & toddlers can/should work it out on their own.
Here's a link that talks more about toddler sharing & babies to share: http://www.janetlansbury.com/2009/11/the-s-word/ Basically, you've got to model sharing in daily life with her and she will eventually use those skills herself.
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I agree with @mewtill. Toy-taking is very developmentally appropriate. At a very young age, they don't have the self-control skills necessary for sharing. They want it and they want it NOW. For some kids, it's not that they don't want Billy to play with the toy. It's that they don't want to wait to play with it. They want it RIGHT NOW. Learning to wait for something is really important so we try to reinforce this every day at home.
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I just try to distract. LO is almost 2 and has a hard time with waiting and taking turns (I don't think one can share without knowing how to wait for one's turn). At daycare, when another toddler is sitting in the lap of her favourite teacher, LO will push that kid off. She thinks the teacher's lap is hers. She just practice waiting without crying at home (as best as we can).
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@banana: @mewtill: I agree that this is developmentally appropriate. I'm curious, though, what you do when you're in a play-date type situation with other parents hovering around. I've got no problem with a little toddler street justice, but I feel like we might get the side-eye for anything less than the usual, "You have to wait your turn ..." and "Please give it back ..." and so on.
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@Mrs. Yoyo: Play-dates are tough! I just play it by ear and try to use different tactics depending on the situation. My son is actually a really good "waiter" so if we tell him to wait and that he'll get to play with the toy later on, most of the time he'll wait and come back to it. But if HE'S playing with something that another kid wants, that's where it gets tricky. I just ask my son if he wouldn't mind sharing. If he says no, I usually turn to the other child and let him know that my son is playing with it right now but as soon as he's done, we'll let him play with it. If that doesn't work, I use the replacement method. I'll give my son something that he wants even more than the toy he's holding (like yummy snacks) or suggest something else that's really fun, like "Let's let Billy play with the toy, and you and I can run really fast to that tree. Ready, set go!!" I just play it by ear. I try to make the situation feel like it's not a big deal. I think sharing causes anxiety for some kids because the adults make such a big deal out of it.
Sharing is such a complicated concept for kids to understand. Building the foundation for sharing is important, like learning how to wait, learning consecutive order (1st, 2nd, 3rd), developing delayed gratification, empathy. These are things that we can work on at home every day that help build the foundation for learning higher order concepts, such a sharing, amongst other things. Until children learn these other skills, sharing becomes a learned behavior and not something that they internalize.
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@Mrs. Yoyo: I play it by ear, since each situation is different. If F takes a toy I stay out of it as long as possible. Sometimes if I feel like the other parent is tense *and* the other kid is upset, I'll say something like "X had that toy & you want it too. He wasn't finished, let's see if he wants it back." I actually don't have to do that too often, since most kids don't seem to care when toys are passed around. Maybe when he's older I'll run into it more?
More often a kid takes F's toy and the parent will make their kid return it. This makes *me* uncomfortable :). I usually say something like "You found a new toy already, lets let X keep playing." I think for some parents it's a reflex.
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We're dealing with this sometimes too. Usually she's great and happily shares and then there's these moods where everything is mine, mine, mine. I usually step in with her because she escalates things very quickly into pushing and swatting when she's in a mine, mine, mine mood.
Since she turned 2 we do more talking about it when we get home and before she goes to bed and that seems to help. A lot of times in the heat of the moment she's just not in a reasonable mood so we end up just having to distract or remove her from the situation. When she lays claims to random things at home I just try not to let her be a tiny dictator and give in. If it's a reasonable request then fine but she doesn't automatically get something just because she wants it right then, especially if someone else is using it.
I think it's a normal developmental stage so we don't get angry with her about it but at the same time I want to talk to her about expectations and set limits on demands.
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