children fighting over toys

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  • February 21, 2015 at 9:22 am
    caedmyn
    Participant

    I have a 9 YO DD and 3 boys ages 2, 4, and 6. They are constantly bickering over toys. There are two swings on our swingset, and they fight over who gets to use them (and one swing is preferred for some reason, so they fight over who gets to use it). We have two Frisbees, and they fight over those (they can’t seem to figure out that Frisbees are meant to be played with multiple players!). The toddler wants to do and have everything the others do/have. The boys have mainly shared toys (play food, Hotwheels cars, and Duplos) and they fight over those, particularly the Duplos. DS1 wants to make huge creations with all the “good” pieces (wheeled bases and flat bases, and sometimes the people and cars) and keep them and play with them for days. The others want to play with some of the same pieces, or take his creations apart when he’s built one and temporarily moved on to playing with something else. We have maybe 200 Duplo pieces, about 6 people, 6 or 7 wheeled bases, 3 cars, and 5 or 6 bigger flat bases (the 4×8 ones). DS1 can use every one of these in some of his creations. I do not know what sort of rules to have for sharing these toys. On the one hand it doesn’t seem fair for him to build something when he’s playing alone and then have someone else come along and want to play and him to have to take his creation apart to share, but on the other hand it doesn’t seem right for him to be able to monopolize most of the pieces of a shared toy all day or for days. This comes up with DD too–yesterday she was playing with all the Hotwheels (maybe 30) and DS2 came along and wanted to play. Or she’ll be playing with “her” toys–Breyer-type and other plastic horses and animals and My Little Ponies and a Playmobil set–and won’t want to share anything or only one or two pieces. She has her own toys and not shared ones like the boys, but I do want her to share at times because if she had a little sister her toys would be mostly shared toys too.

    All that to say…I’m tired of the bickering over toys, but I don’t know what rules to set for sharing and playing nicely, or what might be effective consequences for not playing nicely. I am constantly verbally correcting and directing them but it is not working, and various consequences I have tried are not working either.

    February 21, 2015 at 12:49 pm
    suzukimom
    Participant

    Well, I don’t have all the answers…..

    Toys that get fought/bickered over go in a “time-out”.  When my kids are little (like your boys) I will even say something like ‘Mr. Potato Head is in a time-out for causing fights’.    The length of time-out does vary depending on the toy, how bad the fight/bickering was, and how much fighting/bickering there has been recently.  So it might be 30 min (for a ‘lovie’, or bickering hasn’t generally been a problem recently) right up to a few days if there has been constant bickering.

    If this has been a fairly constant problem – expect that they are going to ‘lose’ most of their toys for a while to start with….

    February 21, 2015 at 2:11 pm
    MountainMamma
    Participant

    The saying around our house is “there is nothing that is ‘mine’ except my underwear and my toothbrush.” If nobody is touching a toy or swing it is up for grabs. If someone’s hands are on something you have to wait your turn. It’s that simple around here. My kids are young (6, 3, and 1) so they are still mainly in parallel play mode.

    When those guidelines are broken, I usually put the antagonizer in timeout and afterward we talk about kindness. We usually pray for patience together since that is at the root of the problem. (Reminders of “Love is patient. Love is kind…”)

    I’ve found it also helps to have them ask the sibling with the coveted toy to “Please tell me when you are finished with that. I’d like to play with it when you’re done.” Lots of practice and role play with kinder ways to relate.

    We still have squabbles but I find that if I teach them constantly with these things, they “get it” after a while and the little fights are less frequent.

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