two specific examples of children competing/wanting to be first - please tell me what you would do?

[halfdozenandtwothrees]

coming out of the swimming pool, everyone has a token to come through the turnstile - both want to be first.

wanting to sit next to certain people at the dinner table (e.g when grandparents here)

it is one of the real disadvantages of having two children and them being very close in age - it does my head in - any thoughts please?

children are 5 and 4

there was A fireman sam episode about the twins competing and not working together, wonder if you could get them to see it on internet or something
my two can be a bit like this, 7 & 5. We kind of take turns to go first, give lots praise to the one who politely stands aside for the other IYSWIM

Try having 3! All 3 wanted to sit next to grandad at Sunday lunch!

Taking turns works well until you forget who put the token in the supermarket trolley/had first squirt of the ketchup bottle/had first dip of the sour cream/got to choose the movie/got to sit at the end of the table when daddy was away, and then all hell breaks loose!

DC are 11 & 8 so you'd think they'd know better by now

There are 4 years between mine and they still argue about this. I say things like "If you go first through the turnstile, then X gets to press the button on the crossing"

It's wearing but it does work.

It's not necessarily close in age. Mine are 3 years apart and they still compete.

I've got three and the younger two (9 and 6) still do that. What actually winds me up is that the younger has something he really loves to be first on-just one thing. So he flings himself to do it first. As soon as he does it, I see the 9yo speed up, and she can almost always (much bigger) get there first if she tries. She then smugly sits there going "it doesn't matter whose first". Aagghh!
She then claims she "just happened to think of running at that point..."
She does injured innocent very well.

Generally I tell the older ones if something really bothers them about being first/doing it, then they make as little fuss about it as possible. We had a huge fuss over a broken glass (chip out of it) ages ago. Because dd1 wanted it and fussed if she didn't, dd2 wanted it, then ds wanted it. If she just quietly offered to get the glasses and "just happened" to give herself that one it wouldn't have occurred to the others to want it.
Dd1's 12yo now and has mostly grown out of it, although it might be partually that dd2 is a bit close for comfort if they compete now.

Giving them each something is generally the way to go.