How do you divvy up the toys between older and younger kids?

[werewabbit]

Ds1 is 4.5 and ds2 is 23 months and, this will sound pathetic, but I'm not sure how to determine who's toys is whose and therefore who should have priority with them.

Ds2 wouldn't have hardly anything to play with if he just kept to what was bought for him specifically, we still have a lot of ds1's stuff from when he was this age and he still sees them as being his. I tell him that he now has to share the baby toys with his little brother but when they both want the same thing it's a tough call. And lots of toys are still appropriate to both of them.

At the moment they pretty much share everything with ds1 keeping his big boy stuff on a shelf only he can reach. It doesn't seem quite fair to ds2 somehow.

How do you do it?

It's a hard one but maybe you should have specific boxes for them each and keep them seperate. Do they share a room ? If not then keep the older toys in ds1's room and the younger toys on ds2's. If not do you have a seperate area ? Life is all about sharing and compromise and ds1 will have to get used to it. It's unfair to ask ds2 to understand as he is too young but at 4.5 ds1 should have a fair idea of how things work. You will be doing him a favour by encouraging him to share with ds2. It'll be hard at first but worth it in the end. Good luck !

I'm not sure I only allow my dc a few special toys each that are theirs everything else is for sharing. When they get new things I do say that they've just got it so they get first turns at playing with it but it's still to be shared.

dd1 (5.5) and dd2 (3). All toys are shared. a few 'special' ones the 'owner' has priority. If the toy is a new present then the recipient is allowed to not share for a few days but then everything is communal.

Is it necessary to make a division in this way? My boys never seemed to feel the need, and nor did we, so we never pursued this distinction.

Your age gap is a bit bigger than mine. There are 22 months between my boys, and basically they don't have 'yours' and 'my' toys/games/books, they just have ours.

Certainly this was the case 100% when they were younger. They are 9 and 11 now, and do have a few things which are owned: they each have their own DS and games. They share the DS games, but the 'owner' has priority. Also they have some different hobbies and interests, which would identify the owner of a few items.

Apart from that pretty much everything is shared/joint-ownership, no matter who 'got it' for Christmas/birthday. All the toys/games/books are in the shared playroom (not bedroom) on shelves/in boxes. If you went in and picked up a toy at random and said "whose is this? you would almost certainly get a blank look.

When they get something for Christmas the recipient will get first dibs or whatever, but usually it will land on the 'common heap' (except for food!) and everyone gets a chance. If they get a book they get to read it first, but then the other will often read it afterwards.

I think this sort of set-up is unusual, but I'm not really sure why. It just makes perfect sense to us.

I think as they get older and want phones, ipods, etc. they will have more personal possessions, but it just hasn't seemed necessary so far.

roisin that's the approach we takes but with the 5 year gap between out eldest two it isn't really possible to implement where as the youngest 3 (3 in just over 3 years) that is very much the case.