Sharing and turns

What this pack teaches

A turn that works has two halves: how long it lasts, and how it ends. This pack practises both, and it never asks a child to hand over what matters most to them.

Most sharing trouble is not about generosity. It is about a turn with no known length, which is the same problem as a wait with no known length: a child who hands something over and cannot picture getting it back has been asked to give it away. Naming the length, and naming what happens at the end, does more than any number of reminders about fairness.

• Ask before you take something.
• Say how long your turn is.
• Give it back when the turn ends.
• Ask for a turn after theirs.
• Say which parts are not for sharing.

How to use this

• ·Sit next to your child rather than opposite them. This works best as a thing you do together, not a thing you set them.
• ·Read the speech bubbles aloud if that helps. Nothing here needs to be read independently.
• ·Talk about the picture before the buttons. “What's happening here?” is often more useful than the sorting itself.
• ·Five situations is a session. Stopping after two is a fine session too.

Practising away from the screen

• ·Put a length on turns out loud: “yours until the timer goes, then Sam's.” A turn with an end in it is a turn a child can give up.
• ·Sort the toys before the friend arrives. Everything that is not for sharing goes in a drawer, and everything left out is genuinely available.
• ·Practise the asking, not the giving. “Can I have a turn when you have finished?” is the sentence that does the work, and it can be rehearsed on you.

Things you can say in the moment

• “Two more minutes on the swing, then it is Ada's turn.”
• “Ask him for a turn when he has finished with it.”
• “That one is yours and it stays yours. Show me what we can put out instead.”
• “You can say no to that one. Which ones are all right to share today?”

What not to push

• ·A child does not have to share a special one. A comfort toy, headphones, a fidget they need to get through the afternoon — those are not turn-taking items and never were.
• ·Sharing everything, every time, is not what this teaches. The cards are about turns two children can both live with, not about giving things up on demand.
• ·Playing next to somebody rather than with them is a real way of playing. Nothing here asks a child to join in a game they do not want to be in.

If this pack is hard today

If the cards are hard, do them with the actual toys on the table. Doing two turns for real with the blocks reaches most children faster than sorting a card about it does.