How to deal with this? Biting/snatching

[Ozziegirly]

One of my close friends has a son the same age as my DS ( just 2). Both (of course!) are lovely boys who 90% of the time play nicely with normal toddler squabbles.

But friend's DS is a snatcher - he always loves what any other children are playing with (normal I know) and will take the toy off them. Him and my DS have very similar likes so often are squabbling over the same toy.

Issue is, the other children tend to just give the toy up when the child takes them, but my DS doesn't. He hangs on, and then unfortunately, bites, pretty much to get the other boy to loosen his grip.

Mortifying and awful for me. This is the only boy my DS has ever bitten, so he's not a biter as such, it seems to just be his way of hanging onto a toy he is playing with.

I always tell him off for biting, but I don't want him to start just relinquishing what he's playing with when someone else wants it - I don't see why he should really.

How would you deal with this, whilst maintaining a nice friendship with the boys mum? She is pretty relaxed about the biting although I am sure she isn't at all relaxed inside.

Can you get to the boys before it turns to fighting, and offer a similar toy so there is one each, or set up a sharing system - we often use A was playing with it first, let him play while I count to 10, and then we'll swap so B has it for 10 secs. I have a friend who puts 1 min on the cooker buzzer if at home?

We do intervene but for example today, they were in a sandpit, my DS was digging with a spade, other child came over and tried to take the spade. DS held on and I said "DS is playing with that one, but there's a rake here and another bucket" but he just clung onto the spade. His mum just said his name in a chiding way.

I then repeated what I said, and then my DS bent down and I could see he was about to bite, so I said "no biting, we do not bite" and then the focus kind of shifted onto the biting.