Is it my turn yet?
"Is it my turn yet?" A question going through the mind of every child that is learning the importance of sharing and turn taking. Waiting for our turn can seem to take an eternity but for the child holding the object of the other child's desire; it seems like time passed a little too quickly. How can we help our little ones navigate this crucial part of social development? The first step is to keep our expectations age appropriate. We can't expect more than they are developmentally ready for. With our infants and younger toddlers/early preschoolers we are still engaged in parallel play so turn taking/sharing does not always happen naturally. You can encourage children of this age to work on those skills with activities such as rolling a ball to each other or completing a puzzle together. From 0-3 we are introducing and modeling but not expecting them to master the skill. Our older preschoolers move out of parallel play and into interacting with their peers, so t...