5 Ways To Teach Sharing and Turn-Taking To Your Toddler
Imagine this scene: A 2-year-old and a 3-year-old come across a pile of toy figurines on the floor. The younger child picks up a princess and superhero figurine. The older child, instead of picking up one of the other toy figurines laying on the floor, comes up to the 2-year-old, reaches over, and grabs one of the toys the younger child is holding. The younger child grabs it back, causing them both to fall over onto the floor and start crying. Sounds familiar, right?
As much as this might seem like bad behavior, it actually is part of learning. If you look over the six stages of play, you'll see that kids around this age often exhibit behaviors of what we can call “possessiveness” and the inability to want to share with others.
Sharing
Sharing is something children need to learn. At this age, kids do not yet have the ability to “put themselves in someone else’s shoes.” This means that kids are more focused on their own thoughts and feelings than those of another kid. Sharing will develop more between the ages of 3-4 years old.
Here are a few things you can do to help your child through this challenging time as they learn to share:
Offer long turns with toys. Allow your child to interact with a toy for a longer stretch of time. To kids, it might feel like the demand to share happens immediately after they get the toy. Allowing them time to play with the toy will help them to share when it’s another child’s turn.
Ensure they are safe. When kids try to snatch toys out of another child’s hands, things can escalate quickly. You may see children hitting, grabbing, and pushing each other. Ensuring that they have nothing to worry about and explaining why they should keep their hands to themselves is a good way to help kids learn to share.
Use a timer. One thing that I personally love is using a timer. This is a clear cut way to help transition a child from one thing to another. Allow a child to have a toy for 10 minutes, showing, and explaining that when the timer goes off, it is someone else's turn. This is a great visual aid and might work better than an adult telling them to share.
There are many different ways you can help steer your child through this age and on to learning to share. Just remember, even if they are struggling to share with others, they’re still learning!
Turn-Taking
Turn-taking is actually a life skill that is most often taught to kids. It's not usually a skill that kids develop naturally on their own. Turn-taking involves a few steps. Kids must be able to self-regulate, understand why we share, what they do when they're waiting, and they must know when to take a turn.
There are a few ways to help teach turn taking to children.
You can first use a social story to help explain why we share and take turns when playing games.
Second, PLAY! Play is such an amazing thing for kids. Just tossing a ball back and forth is considered turn-taking! Get out there and play games with your kids, because this is where they often learn how to start utilizing turn-taking with other kids! Your interaction or your child's interaction with other adults or older kids often involves some form of sharing and turn-taking! Cool, isn't it?
Both sharing and turn-taking can be challenging areas to work through with young children. Sometimes they need extra help to learn to share and turn-take with others. Finding things your kid really enjoys will help motivate them when practicing sharing and turn taking.
Resources:
The Autism Project (2019). http://www.theautismproject.org/images/uploads/how-to-teach_turn_taking.pdf
MacLaughlin, S., (August 2017). https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/1964-helping-young-children-with-sharing
Tara Montemurro, MA, LBA, BCBA
Tara is an expert teacher and behavior analyst. As a lifelong educator, she is passionate about using ABA therapy to teach toddlers and preschoolers with autism how to be more independent and communicate more effectively, and giving parents strategies to help prevent tantrums at home.