AUGUST 7:

Decide:     You can help your child share.

Practice:    Make today an “Organize the Toys” day. Put toys into four categories.

Fun with other kids: put these toys in a place where kids play together and explain they are to be shared when other kids are around (including with brothers and sisters).

Personal: put these toys in a personal play space and explain they don’t have to be shared, but they also can’t be out where other kids are playing. They are to stay in the personal play space.

Don’t need: put these toys away and arrange to donate them. Sometimes a child can decide to give a toy up, but will still have trouble letting go. Decide whether these toys need to be put out of sight today and donated later without the child being directly involved.

Tired of: put these toys into a storage box and put them away for a while. On your next organization day bring them out. They will be like new toys and can be put back into one of the other categories. Other toys can go into the “tired of” box.

           NOTE: How much you need to be involved in deciding which category things belong in depends on your child’s ability to let go of things and understand what the categories mean.

See tomorrow’s Daily Parenting Tip (8-8-13) (inside Kids and Sharing pt2) for more on helping your child share.

Let us know which tips you like the best or any others you think of that you want to pass along to others.

Today’s Decide and Practice daily parenting tip was inspired by our featured picture book, KATIE AND THE PUPPY NEXT DOOR.  Read the book to a child in your life each day as a reminder of what you are deciding and practicing that day.

Come back each day for another good parenting decision and how to practice it. (Each day’s activity will also be posted on Daily Parenting Tips page for easy access.)

Read the whole story at Kids and Sharing.