I have 2 boys who are 15 months apart. My oldest is 3, and the youngest just turned 2. They are very sweet, but laltely it seems all they do is fight over stuff!! They have very similar interests because they are so close, so we have some nast battles over trains and other "boy toys". My 3 year old has even resorted to biting his brother, leaving bad bruises!! How do I keep the peace??
A. M.
hi- I have a 18 mo old and one on the way so I'm forwarding some advice someone else gave me, not from personal experience! he recommended giving the fought after toy a timeout, not the kids themselves. this may be more suited for older children but an approach may be that if they fight, neither side wins.
It helps to get some reading material about sharing. There are plenty of this in the library or you may ask a therapist material of this type.
This has help my sister and friend.
Good luck
A.,
I struggle with this same battle day-in and day-out. I too have a 3 year old and about to be 2 year old. My boys are 16 months apart. Some days are better than others in my house. The toy time out works to a certain degree. They quickly forget the toy has been taken away and move on to something else. We have lots of duplicates of everything and I've even tried painting the bottoms of certain toys so my older child can identify which is his, if there is a duplicate. Still not much success. I think it has to do the capacity of understanding. Developmentally this sharing this is hard and even though they are lucky to have one another, having a constant playmate is overwhelming. I think with patience and time, hopefully, they will resolve this. Hopefully, somebody will have a nugget of advice that will ring true in both our households.
Good luck to you.
Hi A.*Ü*
I have 3 boys, but my the oldest is 18 so no problem with him, the other 2 are 13 and 11 yrs old, and they too seem to fight still over things like clothes, toys, games, shoes you name it, and it is not so much as bad now, but when it was my mom told me a friend of hers told her,when her boys would fight, she would tie them together, and they would have to go all day long being tied together and what one did the other had to do as well, or go as well, and it tooks a few hrous and finally they got so tired of being with eachother attached at the waist they were kind to one another, and well I did this and it was funny but at the same time it taught them, that fighting was not worth it, and they have since gotten along alot better, now when one goes off to a friends house, the other gets somewhat bored and misses his brother, they still have their days, but it's not as often as it use to be.
so you can try that, and see how it works, other than that, try to separate them for a while and se how things work out, I have had to do this as well. they get along better now than they use to. so hope this helps.
D.*Ü*
When my two girls, ages 3 and 5, fight over something I'll ask one sister and then the other if they would be willing to defer the toy to their sibling. Believe it or not, sometimes one or the other will give up the toy. If that solution doesn't work, then I set the timer for 10 minutes. Once the timer goes off it is the other's turn. At first, my children resisted the timer, but once they saw that they each got a turn, they have accepted the timer when they can not agree on who should have the toy. Good luck, D. :)
There is actually a really good article in the Novemeber issue of Parents magazine. My kids fight too and I saw from this article that our parenting was a lot of the reason as to why they are. You might want to check it out.
My boys are close in age to at 7 & just 9 & they still fight over toys. What I try to do at least when I buy them new things is get them the same things, but in a diff color or something. Cause it seems every time we get home they want what the other got. And if they do fight over one toy I just take it from both of them til later. It's all natural for sure, but does get frustrating I know. Good luck!
