How did you teach your twins to share?

[tiredmuma1]

Hiya - my 15 month old DCDA twin boys are impossible to play together they cannot share and just spend the days making each other cry. I try my hardest to sit with them and play nicely but the second I leave they snatch bite slap you name it. ANY tips will be welcome

I've posted this on multiples but any sharing advice welcome :)

It will get better but at 15 months they're just not developmentally able to share properly yet. If I needed to leave the room I used to take one with me/playpen one. It's a difficult age as they're so mobile and strong but their attention span and understanding is quite limited still.

@seeotter thank you I'm glad it's not just me they've now started screaming if I take one with me so I end up just taking them out as often as possible!

Any idea when this behaviour got better? X

It's definitely not you (or them) they're all like it. I think from 3.5ish my twins started to play nicely most of the time - still have their moments though! I know how hard it is staring down the day thinking I can't do another 12 hours of this, so sending you solidarity/coffee/cbeebies!

They’re too young to understand. I think mine were 2.5/3 before this got better.

It’s hard OP … does get easier. Mine are 22 now 🤣

They won't share until they are at least 3. The best to aim for is playing side by side

Thank you so much. I think the hardest thing for me is because I don't know any twin mums I never know if it's something I'm doing or if it's normal so that's really helped.

I bought duplicate toys that were a hit with mine, so they had one each 😳 the fighting between them was insane, and this was the only way I could think of to reduce it because one was non verbal and barely walking and deeply frustrated by it as his DT could talk better and walk! I’ve b/g DTs so slightly easier I suppose in that they did generally have different interests/schemas, but for the overlap between them it worked great. They’d always play/work together excellently when they were up to mischief, proper team building for them, ghastly for me 😂

I think they started truly playing with each other rather than alongside each other around 4ish, they’re 6 now and play beautifully together which is absolutely something that makes me joyful every time I hear them!

Sorry but mine are teens and still don’t share.

I should have added I didn't mean share a toy I more so just meant play without fighting they have 2 of everything yet STILL launch at each other for the toy in the others hand!

In my limited experience of just my twins, you can’t, not really. Distracting with something else to focus their attention back on you works at times, perhaps removal of the toy(s) so neither have it will work (I can’t remember if I did this when mine were as young as yours or not, sorry!) but mainly it’s a ride it out scenario which is spectacularly unhelpful but they’ll learn it in time. We did lots of active play so instead of toys we had an indoor bouncy castle and little tiles climbing frame with slide which kept them amused for ages during the winter and they naturally shared/took turns as they couldn’t both fit down the slide for example and were outdoors an awful lot year round to burn off the crazy.

Unfortunately my two fed on the energy of each other and had very little interest in what I said - through good old google I found that other parents called it escalating twin syndrome (or something like that!) which explained why mine were more like fighting puppies than ‘normal’ singleton kids of the same age who were so much better behaved.

The turning point for mine was 4, they’ve been a doddle since then. It’s not you, it’s them 😂

They are too young yet. My 19 month old twins will play along side each other with my supervision sometimes. But will often lead to fights when one takes something off the other. Or when their wresting gets out of hand! I play games which encourage taking turns. Like posting things, 1 have a go then the other... but I need to supervise this and instruct the rules. Then need to distract often when they are fighting for the same thing. Or if they are really fighting over something I remove that toy and distract with other things. I find they are better when out and about, probably due to lots of distractions. But they are still too young to understand sharing and joint play really

Tbh it’s not sharing they need to learn but taking turns. They’re too young really but a visual countdown like a timer or picture countdown can help when they’re older. Distraction of one maybe?
kudos to you to managing twins!