We’re trying (still… after six months) to have kid #2. Since I was an only child, this brings up many questions to which I don’t have proven answers. Such as: how do you deal with toy ownership and sharing?
My gut instinct is that books, building sets, sports equipment and other outdoor toys are all joint property. Novelties are owned, but must be freely shared. Dolls, action figures, and other toys that assume personhood in the child’s eyes are strictly personal property, don’t have to be shared at all.
You’re not saying how much age difference there is/will be between the two children. This makes a log of difference. Also, whether they’re the same/different genders.
You’ll find in many cases that the older child will “outgrow” many of the toys that were once exclusively his, and will have no problem with the younger sibling taking them over.
It’s a good premise to start with, except for novelties having to be freely shared. I put those in the same category as dolls and things. Also, books inscribed to your first child should remain his own property, just make sure the second child receives books that are his alone.
I think you will have to wait and find out how each child handles their own and each other’s things. I didn’t have to share certain things with my sister because she was much more rough and tumble than I was and things got broken, dirty or whatever when she played with them.
I don’t think books should have to be shared. For one thing, if there’s a gap of more than a couple of years, there’s going to be a phase where #1 is old enough to really care about books (if he/she is that kind of kid) while #2 is only old enough to wreck them. Letting #2 wreck #1’s precious books - specially when #2 wouldn’t be old enough to actually appreciate the same books that #1 cares about, anyway - wouldn’t be a good idea. Some books will automatically get handed down or shared, others will become one or the other kid’s personal property, and we’ve got no plans to deter that.
Can you tell I have a younger brother? I loved certain books with a passion - not necessarily ones inscribed to me, just ones I happened to love - and I was just as possessive about those favourites as I was about my favourite stuffed toys. I would have gone through the roof if he’d been allowed to go at them when he was a little wrecker, just because I was supposed to share.
I think we’re going to go with: anything that the kid has a personal relationship with (favourite books, stuffed toys, dolls, whatever) doesn’t have to be shared. Lego, outdoor toys, blocks etc are joint property. Gadgets are owned, but you have to share them (same as you said) - with the exception that you’re allowed to have one or two really precious gadgets that don’t need to be shared.
Anything that the other kid is likely to break doesn’t need to be shared.
I have a feeling you might get the siblings coming down harder in favour of personal property rights than the onlies, seeing as we spent more of our childhoods fighting those battles…
My kids are 12 years apart, so I avoided this quite nicely!
My brothers and I just sort of worked it out on our own, sometimes with tears and thumping on each other, but mostly because toys are most often given to a kid, not *the *kids. I might play with his toys and he mine, but no kid forgets whether Grandma gave him the GI Joe or her the GI Joe, and the kid who got it retained ownership rights.
But when babysitting/nannying, or even just when my own little ones had friends over, I found it useful to have a safe lidded container for them to put “don’t have to share” toys. The kid decides what’s valuable, personal, fragile or whatever other criteria they want to use, but whatever’s in that bin does not have to be shared with other kids. A large Rubbermaid bin with a lid works very well for this purpose. Other toys not in the bin are shared, played with together (or in parallel, depending on age), and cleaned up together whether you personally played with it or not, just like at school.
Yeah, I’m probably overthinking. At this point the minimum age between the kids would be 2 years 4 months. The gender of the second is obviously unknowable. I supposed I asked because I’m wondering how my daughter will react to having someone else grub up her already-grubby baby books and toys. Maybe she’ll have forgotten, though.
She’s going to get possessive over some. She won’t care one whit about others. Which are which is going to surprise you at least once. Just roll with it.
Unless it’s potentially harmful to the little one, everything is pretty much shared in our house. We told the boy that he was allowed to designate some (less than 5) of his more beloved items as non-sharing, but only a few.
Consistency is important, so the children know where they stand. They might not like it, but that’s why you need to be consistent.
Most of our kid’s stuff is owned by one child or the other, with very little in common. Sharing is encouraged but not mandatory. Gender is also less important with the younger ones - my 6yr old daughter plays with my 3yr old son’s cars as much as he plays with her Pony dolls.
As the father of 4 boys…2 years apart, then 2.5, then 3 years apart…this issue could have been nuclear. Our policy: gifts for birthdays, Christmas, etc have an exculsivity period of several days. Then it became part of the general population of toys.
Corollary: You may not take a toy if it is in someone’s hands or has been set aside momentarily. If you abandon a toy, it is…well, abandoned and you have no claim on said toy.
I was pleasantly surprised when, after each boy received a Gameboy for Christmas (there were only 3 boys at the time) they would swap the Gameboy with each other, rather than remove the game cartridge. The players were “theirs” but it didn’t matter.
I think the plan worked out well, frankly.
In contrast, we were visiting friends, parents of one girl and one boy, when my son picked up a toy. Their son came running from the other room screaming “THAT’S MINE!” and tore it from my son’s hands. My son looked to me with a face that said “I followed the rules. No one was holding it, no one had just set it down. What happened?”. I believe that, because our friends had one of each gender, each kid had their own subset of toys. The boy toys had one owner as did the girl’s. There was no need to enforce sharing as there was no desire to play with the other’s toys.
Well yes, the boy probably doesn’t have to share his toys with his sister, but I would have been tremendously shocked at his conduct just the same with a visiting friend. I know when I was a kid I would have gotten (did get) a very stern lecture about treating guests well, and how visiting children were entitled to play with anything of mine that was out, and I how should be OFFERING toys to them. And made to apologize to the kid, in front of everybody in the room. Or else… I can’t even imagine the or else, it was that bad.
Obviously as the visiting parent you can’t say this, but this was unquestionably the expected “guest right” culture of all my family friends when I was growing up. Over time, I saw the same dressing-down given to younger kids once or twice when they reached the stage of possessiveness.
Seriously, this would have been one of the “nuclear buttons” for my parents. (And for me too as a parent - though my kids have never acted like this.)
As for the question in the OP, as the parent of 2 girls and a boy all 2 years apart sequentially (the two older ones are girls), her gut instinct is spot on with what we do:
The exception to “sports equipment” being shared would be something like a bicycle or a baseball glove, as they each have their own for family outings sized or geared up specifically for them. But generic things like bats or balls are shared resources. They still get argued over, of course, as to whose turn it is to use it or what they’re supposed to be doing with it
I find this interesting. So, it seems that eventually none of your sons has anything that is exclusively his? Or am I misunderstanding? Sounds like if Bobby gets a present for his birthday, it only belongs to him for about a week or so and then it belongs to all your boys?
It’s not “sharing”, it’s “taking turns”, which seems to be an easier concept for little kids to grasp.
Brand new toys don’t have to be shared. If you get something new for Christmas or your birthday, it’s yours exclusively until the newness wears off.
Close personal favorites don’t have to be shared. You don’t have to share the stuffed animals you sleep with, or your favorite doll. Everything else is fair game.
You can’t take something someone else is using right now. You can’t snatch it up if they put it down temporarily to go to the bathroom. They have to abandon it and move on to something else.
But you can’t hog something all day either. If someone really wants a turn, you need to give them one.
Try to work it out among yourselves. Getting mom or dad involved will probably result in no one getting to play with the toy for a while.
We have 2 yrs 2 mo between our girls, so similar gap. Baby is 9 months, so the sharing thing has not benn too much of an issue so far, although the eldest has been great at sharing. I think 2 external factors help - when I returned to work after having her, I shared a nanny with a friend in our home, so she was used to sharing her things from a very early age. My girls also share a room, and from the outset we’ve emphasised how most things are shared property, which she has been happy with. Exclusions have been things like special soft toys (although there are only a couple she reserves as strictly hers), bikes and beds. She likes to borrow the baby’s toys for her ‘baby’, which has gotten her used to the concept of short term lending.
Now babes on the move, she is getting a little more frustrated about her wanting the same toy at the same time, but this is not a unique situation - we encourage her to find ways for her sister to join in, or go and find a quiet space to do her puzzle etc. the girls are always going to be sharing space, clothes etc - my worry has been far more around the younger one never getting anything new and special, rather than the older one who by default tends to get the new clothes, bike, bed etc.
That is, essentially, true. I’m sitting here trying to think of an exclusive toy or book or anything else. Now that they are older they have their own phones, but even the hand-me-down laptops are community property.
And to Robardin: It was certainly not acceptable behavior. I didn’t elaborate on the “after”. I was sticking to the topic of toy possession. Point taken though.
