Hoarding Magna-Tiles

Sharing is an important life skill to learn. Unfortunately for most parents, kids do not understand that concept very well. My kids are still trying to learn the nuances of sharing and how to do it when they don’t feel like it.

Over the weekend, my kids were playing with Magna-Tiles in the playroom. I left them in there for a bit and came back to hitting and screaming (which is mostly par for the course). I’m trying to figure out what happened and deduced that my 5 year old daughter somehow ended up with 80% of the Magna-Tiles to build a museum. She did a great job in building the museum, but now her 4 year old brother was left with a few Magna-Tiles to play with. He built some cars and buildings, but the materials ran out quickly. That’s when the fighting started.

I try to emphasize that it takes two to fight and argue. No party is completely right or completely wrong (usually) and I want my kids to see the grey between the black and white. My daughter could have tried to be more equitable in how she was using the Magna-Tiles and my son could have refrained from hitting and screaming. Both of them could do better and I reminded them of that.

They ended up splitting up the Magna-Tiles and through some miracle, played mostly well the rest of the day. If my kids are tired, hungry, or bored, the arguments and screaming can happen. Once we have a reset and a pep talk if things go wrong, there’s usually a better chance the rest of the day goes smoothly and I’m always thankful when it does (because sometimes it doesn’t!).