To not enforce property rights of young children?

[FlakiestCornflakeInTheCerealBox]

How do you deal with this in your house with your kids? I feel like I need a systematic approach that is consistent and fair without breaking the bank or having to buy two sets of all toys.

DD is 6 and DS is 2. When they both want the same toy my rule is that irrespective of whom the toy "officially belongs to", the person that is playing with it at the moment gets to keep it till they are done and then the other child gets their turn. (It's the same rule when their friends come to our house to play). The only exceptions are toys that are unsafe for ds2, crafty things that dd6 is working on or anything that belongs to DD that ds might break or ruin somehow because he's a wild little toddler. Oh and dd's favourite soft toy is also exempt from this rule and theoretically anything else that means a lot to either child but so far it's just the one soft toy. If they told me categorically that they don't want to share something I'd respect that. The toys up for grabs are things like Duplo, cars, balls, etc. These are mostly toys that are usually in the living room aka their play room that both of them have equal access to.

Yanbu

My reasons for this rule are:

1. DD being the older one has a ton of toys that I want to reuse with ds. A lot of them she has outgrown but obviously when she sees ds play with them she finds them irresistibly interesting again. I don't want to have to buy lots of toys for Ds again when our house is already full of them especially when he's still too young to really notice who gets more presents, etc. (I do try to balance the numbers on Christmas kind of so thqt DD doesn't feel we treat Ds differently but some of the presents he gets are dd's old toys picked by her and given to him by her).

1. Ds, being a toddler, screams blue murder if he doesn't get what he wants immediately and I want neither of them to learn that screaming (and hitting, kicking, etc) gets you what you want.

1. I don't want DD to learn that she always has to give in to others to keep the peace (as dh and grandparents sometimes encourage her to). What kind of message does that send especially to a girl?

The alternative would be to give the "owner" of the toy absolute power over the toy. So if ds is playing with Duplo blocks that were given to DD originally then he has to return them as soon as she asks for them as they belong to her. However, this would then usually go in dd's favour as over the years she has accumulated many more toys obviously.

So what do you do (or have done)?

Yabu: each child should have clear ownership of their toys and not need to share them (or take turns with them) till they officially gift the other child said toy, which then transfers full ownership to the other child.

Yanbu: continue doing what you are doing and stop overthinking things. They will learn about property rights soon enough.

Also apologies for the length and messiness of the post. I just can't express myself concisely.

In our house if toys are in communal areas then whoever gets it first can continue playing with it but special toys you don’t want others to touch have to stay in your bedroom and others have to ask before playing with others toys in their rooms.

Isn't sharing the best option?

We have communal toys and personal toys.

Personal stuff is things like your latest birthday present, the special lego set, your Teddy etc

Communal stuff was the general lego, the train set, the barbies, the building blocks, general craft supplies etc.

Anything someone was working on was personal... but you could hog the whole lego your personal creation for example

Get an egg timer or similar and teach them to ask politely for a turn and then the one with the toy can either choose to pass it on straight away or extend for the period of the timer.

That's what we did. (5 year gap)
Plus DD1 wasn't allowed to give toys / books etc to DD2.
If DD1 didn't want them any more then she said so, but I decided if and when to pass them to DD2.

This is kind of what we do but most things end up coming down to the living room because the kids don't want to.play on their own in their room and nobody can be bothered to tidy up in the evening so if the toys are safe for both and not explicitly special to DD I just let them be downstairs while both kids are still interested in them. Also, the bigger toys like ride along cars or a play kitchen are in the living room and they both love both thouf originally the ride along car was dd's (though she never showed any interest till ds fell in love with it and the kitchen we got for ds but knowing that both of them would love playing with it).

This is sort of light hearted but I want to be fair, I don't want either child to feel they are being treated unfairly and I don't want to do anything that might inadvertently make them resent each other.

What do you mean by sharing? With some things they can't both have it at exactly the same time.

I have a the same ages and sex so I totally get this!! DD keeps her special toys that she doesn’t want her brother touching and/or stuff that really isn’t suitable like lego in her room. Anything in the living room is communal so whoever got their first gets to play with it. If he’s playing happily will the Duplo fire truck then she does not get to snatch it off him because we bought it before he was born. She has learned to get him to trade so to offer him something else to get what she wants but as long as no one’s screaming then I just stay out of it tbh.

I sometimes time it (eg if there are most children and everyone wants a turn) but sometimes it's good for them to have something for as long as they want so that they can really express their ideas without being rushed.

Re your update- DD needs to tidy up herself and put stuff back in her room if she doesn’t want it to become communal. One of those fabric toy baskets with handles is ideal as she can chuck everything in it at the end of the day and carry it up to bed. Remind her then when she brings something down it’s to
share and play with together. If she doesn’t want to do that then of course that’s fine but then it needs to stay in her room.

There is always screaming. Well, to be fair it's mostly ds who does all the screaming and tantrumming but at the same time it's much easier for dd to snatch something from him or snatch it back.

I allow snatching back but not snatching if the other child had it first and yes, ideally I don't want to get involved at all but sometimes I feel I need to set the law to make sure that no one gets treated unfairly. Just wondering what the law should be.

That's a good idea.

I'm also thinking of child locking her toy cupboard in her room as ds loves rummaging through it and some of those toys are not safe for a toddler or need to be kept safe from a toddler!). She is old enough to open child locks.

That's basically what we do. There are a few special personal toys and everything else is communal.

Turn taking type sharing is what works best here too. I actually often use a timer as it reassures the waiting one and very often by the time the 2 minutes is up one of them has moved on to play with something else. We do have duplicates of some things so both can cut up toy food at the same time for example.

If you want a simple law then ours are playroom toys are communal and it’s first come first served. (Or living room in our case since we don’t actually have a playroom!)

If there’s a whole room of toys and they’re squabbling over the same bloody dulpo train then I take that as a sign that free play as gone off long enough and it’s time to direct into a structured activity, get out of the house or if you’re really desperate then stick a film on 🤣

In all fairness DD has never said that something belongs to her and ds can't have it. She seems to be happy to share everything of hers (if she isn't using it at the moment). Doesn't help that ds always wants what DD has.

Maybe I should tell her explicitly that she can say that something particular is just for her always but then she can't leave it lying around.

Following with interest as I'm coming up to these problems!

The other problem with the way we do things means that there is a lot of hovering around for the other child to put the toys they are playing with down for a second so that they can then he legitimately snatched. I sometimes interfere saying that child 2 wasn't done with it yet even if they out it down for a second but again, I don't want to interfere so much. Is it too much to expect from a child (in this case DD) to be able to read intentions and to respect them?

If DD doesn't want ds to have something she can just keep it out of reach.

Thanks. I was worried I'm overthinking it and making a hash of it all in the process resulting in two siblings resenting each other for the rest of their lives.

My age gap was smaller... but I always made sure elder DD had a space to play out of reach of younger DD if she wanted. If she chose to play on the floor next to younger DD, she had to expect that younger DD might interfere.

That's a bit of a problem here as we don't have that much space where DD can play uninterruptedly as ds can reach all the tables now. If she doing craft, Lego or building something else the only place is the dining table but that needs to be cleared before a meal. So storing work in progress is another challenge.

We could say her room is off limits for Ds but she doesn't want to stay alone in her room (she gets very scared but that's another thread...).

Thanks everyone. Really appreciate all the replies. Based on the poll it looks the way we do it is common. Now we just need another rule for now long you can claim a toy when you aren't playing with it. Easy with DD as her intentions ie wether she is done playing with it or not are clear but a bit controversial with ds. E.g. if ds puts something down for a minute can DD then take it? If he's obviously just wearing his shoes then it's clear he's not done but sometimes he might move on, then DD takes the toy and then he wants it back just because DD has got it...

No, I definitely am overtaking this..

Overthinking...

I do the same as you OP, and now try to word it so that new toys are for both of them wherever possible- easier I suppose as I have two boys so there’s no obvious pink vs blue!

It sounds Iike it's become a real battleground for your kids.

I think you can keep ownership without conferring absolute power. Other ideas - we made a point of buying DC2 a couple of big toys before he really grew into them, so he was "letting" DC1 play with them rather than it always being the other way round. And we did have some official passing down of stuff like Duplo and megablox, and some officially shared things. But maybe we just got lucky that this was not a battle our two got that into.

We had a mat system borrowed from Montessori too. Anything a child put on their mat was to be left undisturbed, but anything not on a mat was fair game. I am not sure it would help you just now, but in the long term it helped my two a lot in being able to negotiate and get on.

I've only used one rule when it comes to sharing toys. If they can't share nicely, the item gets taken away for the day and nobody gets to play with it. Usually the warning that this is about to happen is enough for them to stop fighting over it. When they were younger I'd facilitate it by suggesting a time limit or a trade, (still removing the item if no agreement was reached), and now they'll work it out themselves most of the time.

They do each "own" their own toys, but I've no idea whose teddies are whose anymore because they're constantly happily swapping them!