Okay, before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know that we will be doing a seven-day QA series for the Bratbusters Parenting Podcast. So essentially, instead of doing a bunch of questions, we're going to be going a little bit deeper into one question per day for the next seven days. Do you have any questions before I get started, mom?
SPEAKER_00No, you're scaring me. Do you have any questions? Pressure. Do you have any questions? Well, I don't, she plans all this, so I don't know what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well then we will get into today's parenting question. It is Valerie from Canada. Hi, I have a two-year-old daughter. How do I teach her that everything that exists is not hers? I'm currently six months pregnant, and I feel like it's going to be a problem when it comes to her when her brother comes. Right now, everything is hers inside the house and also outside. So my chair, my slide, my swing. When she says it, we just tell her that it's for everyone and redirect her attention. What can we do to reinforce it now that she's two?
SPEAKER_00Welcome to a mini-episode of the Bratbusters Parenting Podcast. I'm Lisa Bunnage. I'm a parenting coach, mom, and grandmother.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Amy Bunnage, Lisa's daughter, and I handle the marketing and planning here at Bratbusters. Let's get into the episode.
Well, I don't quite understand the chair. Oh, I feel like I've got this freedom to talk slower now because I always feel like I have to go fast because we've got so many questions. Anyway, okay, so she's two years old, everything's hers, she says mine. All you have to do, now here's the thing, you've got to be consistent though, is that hers, you let her sit in your chair sometimes, but not others. You've got to be 100% consistent. If you never want her to touch something, then you use this method. You just say no, and then you, you're not necessarily redirecting because she's two. You just say no and then you just take her away from it, okay? So you just pull her away each time. She's got other stuff to do, I'm assuming. Or maybe she has another chair. So if you never want her to sit in your chair, the problem with this is a lot of parents are inconsistent. So sometimes it's okay if she uses the remote control, but other times it isn't. You see? That's the problem with this, usually. So I'm assuming that you're inconsistent in that because it too, they kind of know right from wrong, they're starting to pick it up. And she would be less likely to go for things that she can never have as opposed to things that she can sometimes have. So that makes sense to me that if she thinks everything's hers, that sometimes it is.
SPEAKER_01Now,
do you approach this differently if they are like 16 months old? Are you redirecting at that age?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I do redirect at 16 months old because they're still kind of a baby. 16 to 35 months is what I consider a toddler, and you are doing more correcting, consistent corrective actions. It's not words. Because what you said was no, this is mummies. Everything past the word no doesn't mean anything to her. You just say no, and then you rip just remove her from it. Um, but yeah, you've got to be consistent though. That's like it reminds me of the grocery store scenario I often talk about when they've got a toddler who they're allowing to help in the in the Kleenex aisle or the toilet paper aisle. They allow the child who may be sitting up in the cart or even walking beside the cart, uh, which I don't recommend, by the way. They should be sitting up in that cart with a little goodie bag that they only get when you're grocery shopping. Anyway, I got a whole system on that. But you let them put in certain things and help, right? Throw it in the gr in the grocery cart, but then you get in the pickle jar aisle and all of a sudden all you're doing is saying no, and then you can't figure out why they're having a tantrum. They're not big on reasoning yet. They don't understand why sometimes they can have something, but other times they can't. It's usually more confusion from the parents' perspective than anything.
Now, how do toddlers start to learn what actually is theirs and what isn't?
SPEAKER_00They know because those are the things that you're handing to them. And when they do have it, you don't take it away. So they learn pretty quickly what they can and can't do. The, like I said, the thing is that it's the confusion around the lack of consistency is usually the issue. And also, um, if you've got other people who do allow them to have the remote, let's say it's the remote, okay? So you never want a two-year-old, let's say, to ever touch the remote, but then you have a family friend or a grandparent come over and they let them touch it, you want to intervene and say, you know what, we don't ever let her have that. So please don't let her have that. Okay. So you want to make sure everyone else is consistent too.
SPEAKER_01Now let's say, let's like use a more real life example. Let's say wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00How is the remote control not real life?
SPEAKER_01Sorry, let's use a different real life example. Thank you.
unknownSorry.
SPEAKER_01That was a fake remote. Um,
but let's say, for example, you're at the park and there's a bunch of kids there and they're yelling that the slide is theirs. How would you handle that? There's a big lineup of kids waiting to go down the slide. How are you approaching that?
SPEAKER_00Usually they'll learn really fast that they can't, when they're out in public and there's lots of kids around. Oh, I got a real cute story about my granddaughter, actually, because they they would love to just have everything to themselves, but they learn really quickly that they're gonna have to wait in line. You might have to go through if they are so inclined to have tantrums, you're just gonna have to let them have them and say no, you have to stand in line. It's part of social cues. They will eventually learn so long as you're consistent. I've had some parents who've had a tantruming child, I saw this years and years ago. They had a tantruming child who asked everyone else who was waiting in line, would you mind letting her go? Because she's really upset. I thought, oh my God, are they making a huge mistake? Anyway, this was really cute with my granddaughter. My kids were like this too. They, if if a kid grabs something off them out in public, so it's not theirs, but it's theirs to share with everybody else, kind of thing, right? So it doesn't belong to them, but they're allowed to play with all the toys at this event or whatever it was. Um, but they know it's not theirs. And that kid would grab it off them. So they would never grab it back. Okay, they weren't grabby, but some kids are. So then my granddaughter had had a whole day of just having to share everything everywhere she went. And my son said to her, he says, Oh, do you want to go to the park? And she goes, No, just play with me. Just no, just me play. Like he said, you don't want to see friends, and she goes, No, like she was so exhausted having to share everything all the time. They learn it, she's just two, they learn at a very young age that when they're out in public and it's actually not theirs, it's not at their house, that they it's not theirs and they just have to wait for it. They'll learn, but they might, you might have a few tantrums and they might not be happy about it initially, but that's part of life. You gotta learn, right?
Now, could you imagine with a two-year-old, let's say you deal with this and they're no longer calling things mine. Do you sometimes see with like a new sibling coming along when they do arrive that it kind of resurfaces again?
SPEAKER_00Well, luckily for the first couple years or a year, at least a year, the younger one isn't grabbing stuff, okay, because they're just babies, right? And what you want to make sure is you want to facilitate this. You watch them. A lot of times, older siblings will hit the baby, but that's because the parents aren't watching, they're not seeing what's happening. The baby goes up, grabs something off the toddler. The toddler doesn't maybe doesn't see it right away or whatever, gets upset and then hits the baby. And then you go after the toddler. Yeah, they shouldn't be hitting a baby for sure. But you've got to also try and facilitate them playing well together. Now, if the toddler doesn't want to share, you say, I'll tell you what, if you don't want to share, you can play with your toys up on this dining room table or up on your bed where the baby can't get to it. So facilitate a safe play zone where they don't have to share everything. I don't think they should have to share everything with the little with the baby. As they get older, they are gonna have to learn how to share more. That's a different technique. Um, but when when it's a new baby grabbing stuff, they have to learn they can play safely on their bed without the baby grabbing stuff. But if they do play on the floor, it's fair game. If the baby grabs something, nothing you can do about it,
okay? What age do you think they should learn how to share? By about three, they're pretty good at it. Now they can learn how not to grab stuff off others, okay? So, and you they can learn this at two. So you don't grab stuff off others. They're not learning how to share, they're just learning how not to be aggressive, basically. So if they do grab a toy off someone else, you say no and you hand it back to the other child. But they don't really understand sharing until they're about three, they can learn. Doesn't mean they're going to be good at it. If you're facilitating it, they can be very good at it. But if you're not, they can learn how to actually share and have play with something for a while and then hand it over to another child. That's sharing. What I talk about not grabbing, that's just not being aggressive.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Was there anything else you wanted to add to this question? Um, not really, other than the fact that two-year-old thinking everything is theirs says to me right away that you're not consistent, that sometimes they can have something, other times they can't. It also sounds like
you're a little bit afraid of them because if they think everything is theirs, you have a hard time saying no. Don't be afraid of the word no. There's nothing wrong with it. We all have to get used to the word no. We all have to learn that everything isn't ours. We don't go out in public and just grab stuff off people walking by the street because we want it. The sooner they learn that, the better. I've literally seen little kids go into a store, grab something like this, three and four years old, grab something off a store shelf and try and run out with it because they think everything is theirs because the parents have never said no. Then what they'll do is the parents will actually pay for it because their kids have already started running out with it, and that they're just teaching them entitlement. You don't want to do that. And you want to make sure they got lots to do, they got lots of fun things to play with, and wherever you go, they have got a place to sit. So you're not for you know, they're not saying no, you can't sit anywhere. But they also can learn that not everything is theirs at a very, very young age, two years old. They can learn that. But it is consistency. Like I said, parents tend to say, well, I've just had no energy that day. Then they're gonna take that and run with it. Okay, you have to be consistent. So pick your battles. If you want to teach sharing or not, everything's not yours, then just focus on that. Don't focus on everything in the week. Just do that for a whole week and see how it goes. And then you can move on to something else if you want to work on it. But don't try and take everything all at once. It's just too much. You'd crash and burn, right? When you're learning how to do all this stuff. Yeah, so that's it. Real short little podcast. We're just doing one question at a time, diving a little bit deeper. Harder to dive too deep with two-year-olds because they're not super deep yet. The older the kid gets, the deeper we can go, usually. But two-year-olds seem really complex, but they're not really. They're pretty simple. You just got to watch their face and you can usually see exactly what they're thinking. They're cute as a button, but they're all feet, no brains.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I think we'll end there.
SPEAKER_00Okay, thanks so much for joining us. We'll be back again tomorrow talking about another parenting topic. Bye now.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for tuning in. If you're ready to dive deeper, check out Bratbusters.com to learn more about the behavior board, parenting courses, and private one-on-one coaching with Lisa. If you've enjoyed the show so far, we'd love it if you could take a moment to follow, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more parents just like you. The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Lisa is a parenting coach, mom, and grandmother. She is not a licensed psychologist or counselor. Her services do not replace the care of psychologists or other healthcare professionals. For a full disclaimer, please visit Bratbusters.com forward slash disclaimer.