Own It
Picture this: Your child is playing with a toy for a while, when eventually their sibling or friend comes along and wants to play with that toy as well. Then, your child says, or maybe even screams, “Mine! No, mine!” The situation quickly deteriorates into crying and screaming as the children fight over the toy. Or maybe you ask your child to stop playing with a toy and go do something else you request, instead. They disagree, and so you threaten to take away the toy. The threat proves to be insufficient so you come to materialize it and as you do so, your child begins to scream or cry, saying, “but it’s mine!” Sounds familiar right? This is an all too common situation that stems from several underlying factors. One such factor we will discuss today is the ownership factor.
Children require guidance and direction, as well as protection and care. All of these needs are attended to by you, their parents. You go to work every day so that you can provide the care and protection your children need, as well as to have the resources to invest in them—be it their education, development, or, you guessed it, their access to toys. Therefore, it is you who buys their toys and other gifts, and consequently are the toy’s and gift’s owner. As with anything, the purchaser of a good becomes its owner, and therefore its regulator. As the owners of your children’s toys, you get to regulate their use, and for good reason! Part of the, “No! It's mine” phenomenon is a direct result of the lack of clearly defined ownership of toys, gifts, and other possessions. To state it clearly: You, the parents, are the owners of everything in the house and are simply lending toys, gifts, and other possessions to your children for their enjoyment and development, to be used not unconditionally.
To be fair, the ownership issue is often not the children’s fault, but in fact our own, as parents, and adults more generally. Recall the words we use every Christmas or every time we buy a toy or gift for our children: “Here is a new toy daddy and I bought just for you!” or, “I’ll buy you a toy,” or “here’s your new toy.” This language is the same language used by friends or extended family who may be giving your children a gift, too. With this language, how can we really blame our children? The adults told them they are the owners of their toys and other gifts, and therefore bestowed onto them all of the regulatory privileges associated with ownership.
There is a different way to handle this that can bring more energy to your family. By explicitly telling our children that we are only lending them their toys, on condition that they respect our rules of sharing and listening, we can help eliminate some of this all-too-common and disturbing phenomenon. This definition must be continually reminded and restated. This cannot be overly stressed: It is not enough to just say it once; it must be reminded every time until it is cemented.
“But,” one may say, “As though I did not have enough of an issue with my child, I now will have an issue with the gifter! How am I to handle this situation?”
As a parent, you are the main pillar of support in your child’s life. The role of a parent is not an easy one, but a worthy one indeed. As part of this role, however, the parent is also the house’s regulator. If a friend or an extended family member is giving a gift directly to your child, this can create a regulatory issue. But fear not (imagine me saying this with a finger raised in the air :))! There are a couple of solutions. First, the gift can be presented to the child by the gifter as something for them to use but to be regulated by the parents, naming the parents as the gift’s owners. An explanation to the child as to why this is, is very important. Second, the gift can be presented as a gift to the family. The gift, then, is given to the family to support it and the parents are its regulators so that it can be a constructive gift. When the gift is given to the family, it also teaches the importance of sharing and cooperation, and strengthens the family as a unit. These solutions allow you, as the parents, to have regulatory control over the gift, and allow it to be something constructive.
Toys and gifts, after all, are just objects; they can be constructive or not based on their use and regulation. Beyond just the fun and enjoyment aspect of a toy, a toy is also an opportunity to teach important values of cooperation, sharing, and teamwork to children. Like many social-emotional skills, although children have a natural capacity to embody these skills, they must be taught and practiced whenever possible. By lending toys and other possessions, rather than giving them, we can restore the power and authority of regulation to the hands of your children’s primary pillars of support. But not the power and authority to be abused, rather the power to decide the use of the toys and gifts, and the power to make sure they are used constructively. For, if this is not done, it begs the question: What good is a toy for a child if they have unregulated control over it and never have to share or listen? Will it develop them positively, or will it, in fact, accomplish quite the opposite?
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Why can’t my children share? Why do we have so many fights over toys? In Own It, Co-authors Amir and his son Sharel...
Posted by Creating a Better Future Education Society on Wednesday, April 7, 2021