My friend Heidi came over the other day and helped me out and she didn’t even know it so thanks Heidi!
Her grandson who is 3 and my daughter who is 4 were arguing about taking turns and she said “at my house we do 5 min. turns.” She then would tell the kids, “4 min, 3 min”, etc.
Now those of you that are parents and have been for awhile probably are saying, duh, I already do this but seriously I have not thought of it this way yet. I babysit another child on Tuesdays and he is 8 months younger then my daughter. I have always fought with them about taking turns but the actual timing concept did not come so clearly until I was shown it.
Today is Tuesday and I have implemented this and it is working out nicely. I am making a couple adjustments though. I have a digital kitchen timer that I have been using and training the kids to listen for the beep so they know when their turn is up. It is funny because they keep asking, “is my turn over yet?” It is awesome to them when I say, “no not yet.”
They were playing with a really loud circus toy I bought my daughter that was driving me insane. The song would just keep repeating over and over. So my brilliant idea… Mommy takes a turn for 5 minutes. They gave me the toy without any hesitation at all because I set the time for myself too. What is nice with kids that can’t read yet…I set my 5 minute time for 10 minutes but still told them it was set for 5 minutes. They haven’t noticed any difference. The plan was that they would get onto something else and forget about the noisy toy. Did it work? ABSOLUTELY! It is noise free and has been 20 minutes since my timer went off.
Now I will go hide the toy somewhere.