For our second installment in our play and learn blog series we are going to talk about sharing and turn-taking!

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 now they both start crying. Sounds familiar, right?

As much as this might seem like bad behavior, it actually is part of learning. If you look back at last weeks blog post and look over the six stages of play you'll see that at around this age kids often exhibit behaviors of what we can call “possessiveness” and the inability to want to share with others.

Sharing is something kiddos need to learn. Whether it is through modeling or watching others do it. At this age kids do not yet have the ability to think about others in the aspect of “putting themselves in their 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.

There are a few things you can do to help your child through this challenging time as they learn to share. Here are a few:

• Offer long turns with toys. Allow your child to interact with a toy for a longer stretch of time. Sometimes 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 kids turn.

• Ensure they are safe. When kids try to snatch toys out of other kids hands, what follows is often a form of aggression. This may include: hitting, grabbing, pushing, etc. Ensuring that they have nothing to worry about and explaining why they don't show aggression is a helpful way to help kids.

• Use a timer. One thing that I personally love is using a timer. This is a clear cut way to help transition a kid 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.  Since it’s actually the bell of the timer informing them that it’s time to share instead of the adult.

There are many different ways you can help steer your child through this age and on to learning to share. Just remember, that even if they're struggling to share with others, they are still learning!

This leads us into 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 kiddos. 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 kiddos. Sometimes they need the 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