20 month old won't share and extremely selfish -help

[Inspired by Reggio]

I agree - the toys here are MINE and I choose to share and give turns with them and yup everyone has color coded cups for self serving water on demand and some things that are 'just theirs' and not for sharing or turn taking.

Sharing is a very hard concept for toddlers for sure ... unfortunately they do not have a true concept of 'time' yet at this stage so when they have to give something up to 'share' they initially are thinking they are NEVER getting it back ... it takes a lot of time and practice for them to TRUST that yes indeed you will get it back when it is your turn again.... siblings get it qucker cause they get daily practice day in and day out from the time they are born so even if they have no concept of 'time' they know the 'dance' of sharing and turn taking ... in the meantime for those who have not 'gotten it' we get to play the 'coach' giving them lots of time and practice in the game to master the skill of sharing and turn taking!

One thing I find really helps speed it along for toddlers is using the correct terms with them cause we often mix terms which confuses them .... sharing is something we do with multiple items ... you need to share the blocks your hording, the books your hording, the 20 cars your hording, the grapes we are eating - because sharing is FRIENDLY and well everyone WINS with sharing cause we all end up with 'some' immediately .. and you can also play it with the how would you feel if you wanted to play with blocks or read a book or drive a car or enjoy some grapes and someone had ALL of them and would not share with you - helps them to learn empathy as well.

Verses TURN TAKING which is in reference to something you cannot SHARE cause there are only ONE of them ... so you need to take a TURN with the one ball everyone wants, the special book, the Thomas Train verses the 20 other perfectly good trains no one wants cause they are not Thomas and so forth those things you cannot 'share' in the true sense but rather one person gets a turn and then the next person gets one based on how the group defines 'fair time frames' ... and here you can use a visual to help toddlers understand that when the 'sand runs out on the timer it will be your turn again' or when the microwave beeps or today is X's turn ALL DAY with that you and tomorrow is your turn ... whatever 'turn manager' you want to use in the program so that someone does not 'horde' the single items all the time as some kids would tend to do and well we cannot have 5 of everything in the program so that they never have to take turns with things

In the meantime I find BAILEYS really helps during the MINE stage