Lockdown toddler has no idea how to share

[Pinkroses87]

My brother dropped off his two kids today (hospital appointment, no other childcare available) and it’s hit me - my daughter has no idea how to share. To be fair, she’s 18 months, and has been locked down since she was about 8 months. But what do I do about it? She’s had so little interaction with other children (we live in the middle of the countryside and none of the nurseries anywhere near us take them pre 2). How do I start to get her to share? No siblings yet.

Absolutely normal at that age. I'm sure they don't know how to share fir a good while yet. I'm sure they don't even start until they are over 3

Tbh I think it's normal at 18MO and I doubt the lockdown has had much impact either way. Something I think a lot of parents don't appreciate is that children don't learn social skills from their friends. They fine tune them but they have to learn it from their main care givers. The best thing you can do is spend as much time as you can socialising with her and teaching her negotiation skills etc in your own play. Tea parties with pretend tea sets are brilliant for this. My 2YO has loved hers from about 18MO. You can practice empathy and being polite etc eg 'oh look teddy bear's cup is empty shall we see if he wants some' 'oh you habe 4 cups there and mummy has none. Could we share them' I honestly wouldn't expect a child to know to share at 18MO though. It's much older when they really start with collaborative play, like more just before school age, and even older still before they develop genuine empathy. Just enjoy her and play with her. If she is rough or rude around other kids just gently remove her and explain that we should be kind and share but I wouldn't go any further than that x

It's normal at her age but you could start working on taking turns as that's easier to explain. For example on a slide, child 1 goes first then her then child 1...

My 2 year old doesn't know how to share either. We are trying to teach him. I don't think lockdown impacted - I think all toddlers have a tough time sharing at first.

My toddler is nearly 2 and doesn't know how to share and has no idea. Before going into tier 2, we had a play date where my lo had his little gang over and the oldest was 2.5 and he didn't know how to share either. I think it's very common and they also don't play with each other, they play alongside each other unless one of them picks up an interesting toy they all go charging towards it to get it first.

Thanks, everyone! I think part of the weirdness is that normally I’d be going to toddler groups etc and seeing what was standard behaviour. And as I’m not, I really don’t know. I’ve read books, but still a bit different.