Co-operative Play

[flowerchild]

Thanks you two.

I think I just needed to vent and get it off my chest yesterday. It can make for such an exhausting day sometimes.

I'm glad to read that I'm not the only one dealing with this. The DCK is older, so it's not just teaching a two year old to play nicely, KWIM? I actually spend a lot of time helping this particular child be more understanding of the little ones who, of course, don't have the ability or fine motor skills to play the way DCK wants them too.

[Lee-Bee]

Long ago I nannied for a 4yr old. She had a huge colouring book that was from the show 'Arthur'. The book was mostly filled when I started working for this family and EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. had Arthur in the EXACT same colours (from the show). I started colouring a page with different colours and she freaked. She could not handle him being different than he is supposed to be. It really stressed her out! She just had this strong personality that NEEDED order.

I like 5LM's way of telling the child that if they need it to be their way then they need to play on their own because the other children have other ideas and want to do things differently. While it is important to try and stretch their way of thinking sometimes it just isn't worth the stress (to you and the child) to force them to go outside that comfort zone of having order and control. The consequence is that they are not part of the group while they maintain that order and control. Pointing this out to them will hopefully bring it to their awareness that if they ease back and hand over a bit of control they can have friends to play with.