Does the first child retain possession of books and toys forever, with the second child only getting to “borrow” them as they move through childhood or do they belong to the second child once the first child outgrows them? If the first child retains possession, should the second child get similar parallel books and toys?
For example, my 3 year old has amassed quite a nice library of books for kids age 0 to 6. He has a large collection of classic Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss. I know it is fair for him to share his library with his infant brother, but is it fair for him to eventually give the books to his baby brother to keep? Is it fair that his little brother will never own a copy of “Brown Brown Bear What Do You See” or “The Cat in the Hat” and for the rest of his childhood be borrowing since his big brother got them all first? Or is it expected that I buy the same books for the second one as well? Or do I let it be known to the 1st child that all books eventually become family books and are transferable? The same questions could be asked for my 1st child’s collection of kid DVD’s and Thomas the Tank Toy Trains.
Huh, our kids’ books and movies and toys are all pretty much communal, unless there’s a specially written inscription or something. Same with me when I was growing up, but there were 7 kids and no other way to do it. All of my siblings do it this way with their kids now, too. I’ve never heard of a family where one kid owns the books and toys.
In our family, most stuff got handed down, at least the baby/toddler stuff. My sister and I developed different preferences for reading materials, and she wouldn’t be caught dead reading my horse and science fiction books, and of course since she was my younger sister, I generally didn’t read the girly books that she favored. My brother liked science fiction as well, and I was willing to let him read my books. Since I’d bought almost all of my science fiction, though, I considered it to be MINE. My parents regarded science fiction to be unsuitable for girls.
Oddly enough, my sister has started enjoying modern retellings of fairy tales as an adult, and I was able to send her quite a few books, which she greatly enjoyed.
Big brother: “Your honor, the books in Exhibit A were given to me as a gift from my parents at age 8, and were then stolen from me without my consent by my parents when I was 13 and given to my little sister. Nemo dat quod non habet.”
Little sister: " Your honor, my brother didn’t complain at all when our parents gave me the books in Exhibit A until he was 30 years old. So even if our parents committed theft when giving the books to me, my brother has lost any ownership interest he might have had by acquiescence.
Do older kids really want to hold on to their copy of The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar? I’d imagine they’d outgrow 99% of the stuff and not care what happened to it. They can keep the 1% they do want.
Another vote for “communal”. In fact, everything was communal: I didn’t “own” much of anything until I was in high school, and even then I only thought of small, movable things as mine: I might have had the use of a car or furniture, but I never thought of it as mine. Although things with faces were different: my stuffed animals were mine.
This never felt like a burden or like it was unfair in anyway. It’s just how a household works.
ETA: I also never felt like things belonged to my parents, either, and that they were “letting” me use them. Parents that are like that have always bugged me. They belonged to the household, and I was a member of the household. I don’t think this was ever stated explicitly.
There’s a gap of four years between my kids, so there isn’t a lot of stuff that they both want to use at the same time. When either kid outgrows stuff, we sort it into three piles. The first pile is the smallest - this is meaningful stuff that we need to keep forever. This stuff gets boxed up in the basement or stashed on a high shelf in the closet. The second pile is the “give away/sell” stuff. These things are sold at a yard sale, given to Value Village, or passed along to Kid #2. All yard sale profits are split 50/50, because it’s easier that way. The third pile, consisting of Happy Meal toys and similar crap, gets pitched.
So I guess in our house, kids “own” their books and toys until a formal transfer of ownership takes place, but any yard sale profits reflect dual ownership. We also have a strong expectation that toys/books will be shared with the non-owner. Also, there is no way in hell I’m buying two copies of any book.
If the book/toy/whatever was given to a specific child (e.g. as a birthday present), it belongs to that child, who may choose whether to keep it, lend it, or transfer ownership of it. Otherwise, things are communal—owned by the family.
Anything that was wrapped up as a gift and given to the child is theirs forevermore. Anything that was just sort of brought home for the kid without a special occasion (christmas, birthday, etc.) is group property amongst the children.
My parents pulled this kind of thing on me all the time, though not with children’s books. For my 9th birthday I got a cute desk and chair to go in my room that was taken away from me and given to my brother a few years later because he needed a desk. The year I went away to college my birthday presents were a microwave and a minifridge that were taken back by my parents when I graduated and given to my brother because he was starting college that year. I had to go out and buy a new microwave for my first apartment because my brother had mine. When I took my dresser out of my room with me when I moved my parents flipped out because they wanted my brother to have it but at that point I put my foot down and explained that I was tired of having my birthday gifts taken away and passed down. As far as I was concerned once they put a big bow on it and made a big deal about how it was my birthday gift they lost the right to take it back and give it to my brother. If they had just furnished my room and then given me clothes or books or something as a gift it wouldn’t even have occurred to me to think of the stuff as mine and they could have passed it down all they wanted.
What happens twenty years down the road, when Grandma and Grandpa want to downsize (eventually) and are trying to figure out which person an item belonged to so that it can be passed down to the appropriate grandchild?
As it happens, I’m the oldest of two, and it’s not looking like I’m going to be providing my parents with any grandchildren. My brother has had children, and we’ve done a mixture of “whoever’s name is in it owns it” “whoever has strong memories gets it” and “if it’s ok with everyone, charity gets it”.
So, in other words, you are not wrong, but what stuff should be kept changes over time, assuming people don’t dispose of books as soon as the last child outgrows it.
Some of my father’s childhood books are apparently still around (though I’m not sure who is currently in possession of them). It may be the case that my brother and I will get into a battle over whose child gets the books - my first, or my brother’s first. Notwithstanding all of that, what happens if I give them to my son, and later, my Aunt (my father’s sister) comes visiting and tells my son that the books that he has actually belong to his great-aunt, they were stolen by his grandfather, and please give them back right now so that they can go to great-aunt’s favorite child? I think some of the books are out of print and I would consider it cruel to do that to a child.
There’s a 3.5 year age gap between my son (5 years old) and my daughter (20 months old). All the baby/toddler books have been handed down to my daughter, along with most of the baby toys. I went through them with my son and he got to choose which ones he wanted to keep. This was when she was about 6 months old, so it wasn’t a huge deal to her.
Unfortunately, many of the toddler toys she’s interested in make noise or have gears or other visible mechanics of some sort, making them more interesting to my son, who then decides that she needs to share while he does not. He plays with the baby/toddler toys fairly often, which I find a little irritating, both because I’d prefer he play with toys for older kids and because the resulting fights are super annoying to referee. Part of the issue is that the toys used to be his. He can remember having played with some of the toys, so in his head, they’re still his, so he’s still a little territorial and, complicating matters, his sister is going through her toddler “mine!” phase.
Thankfully, my son and daughter’s tastes are starting to diverge. What stinks is that she’ll probably need some additional toys soon that address her interests, which will probably cause more arguments. I’m not planning on getting her a giant mound of toys by any means, but she probably could use a new thing or two, yet my son is at the age where he really doesn’t need to be getting toys for no reason anymore. I’m still not certain how to handle it. I’m thinking that this might not be a terrible time to either start with an allowance or give him the opportunity to earn something so that his purchase can coincide with something his sister gets. Tricky. Very tricky.
If it was in my room, it was mine. The questions (fights) were a result of how it got into, or out of, my room. Lots of this growing up because my parents didn’t believe in spoiling us with material possesions, only themselves.
With my two boys, pretty close in age, we made clothes and books communal. We would just buy two of any really good toys to prevent problems. Yeah, we spoiled them.
I really like this. And in practice, it’s tended to be the way things worked with my sister and me regarding toys. (For books, there was a lot more of “I picked this out myself and bought it,” and correspondingly a greater sense of ownership, but we tend to have books on permanent loan to each other pretty much constantly, so ownership is in name only.)
My parents are in the process of doing this right now! The general rule seems to be that all our toys and not-already-claimed books are communal property, either to be divvied up among grandchildren equally and randomly (the very large collection of beanie babies and My Little Ponies) or to be given outright to the first grandchild (some music toys and books) with the unstated proviso that they are not hers, but communal grandchildren property to be re-passed to the second grandchild, then third, etc.
The examples you give haven’t been much of a problem for us. My son is 4, and his 7-year-old sister pretty much couldn’t care less about Brown Bear, Brown Bear at this point, so all those kind of little-kid books and toys just went into his room and she’s not terribly interested in getting them back. Even her little Playschool dollhouse is in his room, and she didn’t seem concerned because it’s really too babyish for her now. I think this tends to change when you’re talking about “big kid” toys, which tend not to get passed down as much at all, especially if they’re particularly special or one they can play with for a number of years.
We do a lot of communal stuff in our house. When one of them gets a Lego kit, for instance, whoever it belongs to gets to be the one to put it together, but when it falls apart, it all goes in the communal Lego bin. They each have their own bookshelf in their room, but they only tend to keep their very favorites there, the rest are in a family bookcase. I find at least with my kids that it encourages playing and reading together, and helps minimize fighting over someone playing with someone else’s toy.
I agree with all those that said specific gifts belong to one child, everything else is communal.
When I was growing up, my brother and I shared all toys such as farm animals, cars, dolls and My Little Ponies(no boundaries regarding gender, which worked nicely); we also shared all books. We had our own cuddly soft toys though, and I’d recommend this - it’s nice to have something that’s yours, especially when you’re young enough to think your cuddly toy is a sentient being and is kind of your friend
We don’t need to worry about sorting through it all to hand down to any kids I have or my brother has - everything went to our younger cousins! We had outgrown a lot of it but anything we had spent a chunk of our own pocket money for such as a computer console was reimbursed by our auntie. I don’t remember caring even slightly that my toys were given away, my cousins were very cute and good fun, and we enjoyed playing with our old toys with them! We were able to keep anything we had a sentimental attachment to. I still have my cuddly toy.
Books and toys were mostly communal - they almost had to be, as my kids were only a year apart. There were a few exceptions- my son had no interest in Barbies and my daughter had no interest in K’nex.They each had their own Tamagotchis, Gameboys skates, stuffed animals ,and bicycles. Once they lost interest in most toys or games, they were passed down to younger cousins like the clothes were. Books and certain classic toys stay with me and my husband - eventually we’ll need something for the grandchildren to play with.
I don’t have children (and am unsure if I want any), but parents like this bug me. Especially since my extended family on my mom’s side where a lot like that. Especially with things like food. I.e. I GET the BIGGEST/MOST because it’s my money. Well, if with a group of fuckings KIDS of course you’re the one with the money. :rolleyes:
