Saturday, May 15, 2010

Learning to Share -- It's a (Lengthy) Process!


My sweet angels (see, photographic proof) have been bickering pretty much since they woke up this morning. Yesterday, they ended the day with crabbiness over the dollhouse -- they must have been dreaming about it, because they woke up this morning and proceeded to be crabby with each other over the dollhouse! We have a Barbie house and we have a Fisher Price Loving Family dollhouse -- both were gifts for our 9-year-old when she was younger -- a birthday and a Christmas I believe during her 3rd and 4th years? Anyway, the Barbie house lives in her bedroom, where it has been all but forgotten until recently. The dollhouse lives in our family room, where it has been all but forgotten until recently. Care to guess what the recent spark in interest has been? Having a little sister who is interested in playing with them!

I made the suggestion that if we couldn't share the houses and play nicely together, that we would put one in each of their rooms and that would be the one with which they played. That was not a popular suggestion. So, they decided to try sharing and playing nicely together with the dollhouse. That was decided in the living room. By the time they walked downstairs to the family room, all bets were off! I did come up with another suggestion that actually bought us an hour or so of pleasant playing and sharing -- the dollhouse opens up and has 2 sides, each with 3 floors. I suggested that they each take a side and that is theirs to play with -- instead of pretending it was a house, they could pretend it was an apartment building and they are neighbors. Surprisingly, they tried this without argument and played nicely for quite some time!

Of course, at some point their patience with each other wore thin, and then things happened like my elder daughter deciding to play "earthquake" and shaking her side of the house (insisting that it didn't affect her sister's side -- but, I have vision and could see both sides shaking...). That irritated the younger one. I'm not sure if that was what caused her to hit her sister with a plastic maraca, or if it was something else... Anyway, I asked her, "Did you hit your sister on purpose?" And she said, "Yes, but I said sorry!" (Hey, at least she's honest!)

Tomorrow's another day...

2 comments:

Christine said...

Reason #56 that I only have one child! You're better than I would ever be at referee duty!

The Fine Art of Motherhood said...

Yeah, good times! ;) But honestly, for every time they are crabbing at each other there are at least 2 times that they are sweet to each other -- we spent the whole day outside and they are in the bathroom right above me giggling in the tub!