Thursday, 17 November 2011

Teaching a toddler to share


Facing another parenting difficulty these days and its driving me slightly mad. I have absolutely no idea how to deal with it, or fix the situation. As far as I can see it’s purely a case of riding it out.

It sharing – toddlers don’t understand the concept of sharing and obviously anything anyone else has is the best thing ever and they have to have it right that second.  In that case I usually remove the item and give it back to whoever had it first and explain they need to share and take turns. They look at me like I am insane and continue to fight usually with the offending item being removed. It’s difficult because R is really too young to understand.
The hardest situation is when J is sitting nicely playing with ‘HIS’ toys and R decides that he wants to join in. Resulting in J getting very defensive and upset at R taking his toys. I completely understand J’s frustration they are his toys and at that moment he doesn’t want to share and I feel that he shouldn’t have to. As well as learning to share they need to learn a sense of self of worth too, and that something’s are theirs. How do you deal with it though? R is at that age where he is getting difficult to distract and he just wants to play with his brother. There is nowhere for J to go that is safe, he used to be able to play on the sofa but not since R can now climb up there to.

Has anyone got any advice on how to deal with this? 

No comments:

Post a Comment