Help! Crawling baby and 3 year old's toys.

[lostindubai]

My six month old has started crawling, I think in part because she wants to get to her brother's toys! He moans when she gets them (briefly) and she moans when I take them off her. How do I keep the peace? I don't want to send him off to his room to play as I don't want him feeling excluded. She has a jumperoo but won't tolerate it longer than five minutes.

[BellaGoth]

Watching this as we'll be in this situation in a few months!

At the moment my three year old mostly wants to play with lego, we keep that on the table so out of baby's reach.

I'm thinking of buying DD (the baby) some things of her own that DS has already, so brio, duplo etc so the toys are more "shared". No idea if that will work though!

[DollyBarton]

Sorry Lost, but here begins one of the really tough stages. Crawling and getting toys in NOTHING compared to the all out screaming and fighting that will start when baby is old enough to actually want what big brother wants at the same time. Hopefully the age gap is enough to reason with if brother sometimes but the only thing you can do is not let baby take things he is actively using. Jump in and distract her. When she is older you will need to instigate a rule that they must ask if they want what the other has and if the answer is no, you can use an egg timer for when they have to swop to the other person but you are e still 1.5 yrs from that situation.

This issue is the bane of my life. I've a 3yr old, 2 yr old and 10month old. The 10 month old us the least of my problems.

[Artandco]

Get 3 year old to play with any small toys on the table

[DollyBarton]

BellaGoth, extra items that are the same will make zero difference unfortunately.

[Believeitornot]

Get her some toys.

Then reinforce the rules. Eg tell the baby to ask the three year old (yes I know this is ridiculous) and if he says no then hand them back. Ask the three year old if there's anything baby can borrow and reinforce the borrowing (i.e. He can't change his mind five seconds later). Maybe have a sand timer.

You have to sit with them quite a bit to teach them how to play together - I did! But now they generally play pretty well together so it paid off.

[BellaGoth]

[drspouse]

Would you consider a playpen for times you want to play with him and complicated toys?

We used one for maximum six months when DD was in the giant-on-the-train-tracks stage. Didn't put her in long each time and gave her a selection of her own toys to keep her occupied.

[lostindubai]

Thanks for replies! My ds is actually really good at sharing his things and if I asked him to he probably would. At the moment my concern is dd's safety with toys that have small parts and she just wants to gum them. So when he has his toy cars or railway set out is when I really struggle - Bella we thought the wooden train tracks would be safe but they're not - a chunk of wood flaked off when dd had one so we've had to put a stop to that

We don't have a table in the front room but we have talked about getting a coffee table. I realise this will only be helpful for a short while as dd is progressing through her milestones at a rate of knots - I was hoping for a little longer without having to tackle this particular issue!

The travel cot is a good idea, depending on how dd takes to it.

[drspouse]

We had the kind of playpen that is more like a stairgate, so you can (in theory - the catch was quite tight) fold it back flat when you aren't using it.

[GiraffesAndButterflies]

I am having a lot of success (ie: occasional moments of peace) by teaching 3yo DD to give something else to baby DS if she wants what he's got. And praising her for sharing whenever she gives him something.
Trying to help DD take responsibility (within reason obvs) also helps, so encouraging her to leave things she doesn't want to share out of reach. Also we seem to have a lot of things where there are multiple similar toys, eg happyland people/squeaky eggs, so DD gets to choose how to divide them up.

At the moment though my problem is more often that DD wants the baby toys rather than vice versa!