Tuesday, February 7, 2012

What does this say about my child?

Since she has been old enough to understand (probably around a year), Abby has not been pleased when it comes to sharing her toys. And when I say "not pleased" I mean a pee-pee dance, stomping, screaming fit.

Now, I understand that Abby doesn't have the capacity to understand sharing at this point (Lord knows Mayim Bialik would have something to say about this post), but her behavior is enough to evoke these looks:

"The Look"
And when I say she evokes these looks, it's the toddlers she's with that give her those looks as if to say, "Dude, what is your problem?"

Last week, I took Abby to a friend's house to play. Obviously, this means that all of the toys in that house did not belong to her. This is where it was particularly troubling. She suddenly became possessive over toys that weren't hers.

She kept trying to give me a stuffed bear that belonged to the other little girl. Whenever the other little girl would reclaim the bear (that belonged to this girl), Abby would pitch a pee-pee dance, stomping, screaming fit.

Now, I am pretty sure she pitched the fit because she considered this bear to be a special gift to her Mama, but it did evoke "the look" from the other little girl (see photo above).

Tonight was even more extreme.

A different little girl came over and was playing with Abby's toys. Abby was not pleased with this. She literally attempted to retrieve every single toy the other little girl was playing with to give to me so I could "protect" them. Every. Single. Toy.

Again, this evoked "the look" from the other little girl (see photo above).

In both cases, the little girls Abby was playing with also opted to placate her.

The looks they had on their faces were along the lines of, "Wow. This girl is really, really upset. It's not worth it to me, here you go. Take the Elmo that you never play with."

Yes, I know Abby doesn't understand sharing yet, but if we continue along this route, we are going to have to seriously intervene.

I suppose we could take the Mayim Bialik approach, but I don't know how many friends Abby would be able to make in the midst of that process.

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