Asker: I have 3yo and a 10 mo. The older one doesn't want the younger one to play with his toys, and the younger one wants to wrestle with the older one. Sometimes the older one is mean to the little one, but other times the younger one is just in the way and gets hurt by pure accident (well, unsupervision on my part really). How can I teach them to play nicely together? How do I teach the older one to share?
Amalia: You really can't teach a 3yo to share. You can supervise and MAKE a 3yo share, but you can't really teach a 3yo to share on his own because it's the nice thing to do. And you can't teach a 10mth old to leave his brother's toys alone or not to try to wrestle.
Asker: When will they do it because it is the right thing?
Amalia: Maybe when they are about 13yo, if you did your job right. Before that, you supervise and train. You make certain rules and watch and enforce them. Eventually they get in the habit of not doing certain things like wrestling or grabbing toys away, but you still do not leave them unsupervised until they are reliably trained and you feel you can trust them for short periods of time. The age depends on the child, but 3yo is far too young. Even if you are very good at child training, don't expect a 3yo to be trustworthy in this area. You need to be watching and training these babies every time they are playing together. If they are being perfect (which probably means they are each doing their own thing and not really playing "together" at all), you can run to the kitchen to throw something in the trash, or you can take a quick potty break, but otherwise, you need to set them up playing very close to where you are, and you need to learn to supervise them.
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• Jan. 4, 2006 - Thanks! Great post!