Children competing for attention!

[Emelia]

Following a rather stressful morning i thought i'd ask how other mum's deal with this!

I have two children aged 4 & 16 months & i'm struggling to entertain them at the same time. Both my children have a love for books but different ones! My daughter will come & sit on my lap for me to read to her i'll start & then my son will want a different one read. He understands to wait his turn which he does no problem but as soon as it's his turn she will hit me & my son with the book she wants reading. Then the arguments start! It's not just with books this could be with anything.

I didn't think 3 years was a big gap but they both want such different things!
Anyone else got a similar gap & how do you cope? Sometimes i think they get on better when i'm not in the room with them-but then nobody gets any attention!

This of course will all get easier(i hope!) when he starts school in January, but then i don't want to wish his last few weeks at home away.

The joys of being a parent!

Don't think that I'm going to be much help here. I had a four year gap between DD1 and DD2. They sound very similar to your two. I don't think that your problem is anything to do with the age gap, just with the fact that they are both competing for your attention. IMHO there's not much that you can do really, it's not a case of giving any more than you already do.

What seemed to work with my eldest was making what we called her special time. She learned that when it was 5 o'clock - that was her time until bed at 6. She would watch the clock closely until it said 5. Then we'd sit and read or do whatever she wanted and DH would take DD2 away from us so DD1 could have her time.

I think that I should also add that my girls still have this need to compete and they are in their early 20's.