Forbidden Playmate: How to Get Your Kids to Play Together
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The fight
The day didn’t start out with a forbidden playmate, but it escalated into such. My boys stood woefully looking at each other through the open doorway.
They’d spent the morning fighting over whose turn it was to have the truck and who was going to decide how they’d play. I tried to find ways to get them to work it out, but the tension remained. Each child wanted to do things his way.
To be fair, the oldest child usually decided how things were going to be played. The second child often acquiesced to his older brother, but this time, he wanted to decide, and saw no reason to change the status quo.
So, they squabbled and fought. I heard cries and shouting – and the sound of shoving. That’s when I threw down the gauntlet. I called for the forbidden playmate.
Forbidden playmate
“Since you don’t want to have a good time playing with each other, you can spend the rest of the day not playing with each other. You can each choose a truck and some blocks and play the way you want to play. I put the oldest boy in the living room and the second son in the wide hallway next to the living room.
They stood there, each in his own room, forlorn. Each boy tried to play by himself, but it just wasn’t the same. The house grew quiet as they tried to find something to do with their own toys. There was no brother arguing how to do things, and no brother to make playing more fun. That’s what happens when there is a forbidden playmate.
Once they asked, “Can we play together now?”
I replied, “Oh, no, it’s so much better if you can each have your own toys. See how quiet the house is? Nobody is pushing or hitting and yelling or crying. It’s sooo much better playing by yourselves, because you can each do it just the way you want to do it.”
I confess I had to turn my face so they would not see my smile. I confess I felt sorry for my guys, because they weren’t having fun anymore. They went back to playing by themselves for a while, but eventually they both just stood in the doorway looking at the forbidden room, the forbidden toys, and the forbidden playmate.
From forbidden playmate to best buds
After an hour or so, when I was certain the boys got the message, I stopped my tasks to check on them. They were so sad, so pitiful; I almost cried.
“Can we play together now?”, oldest brother asked.
“Do you think you can work it out and agree on how you are going to play?”, I asked.
Both boys nodded their heads. I gave permission and watched in delight as they scrambled to get their toys together in the same room and set up their play.
A lesson well-learned
Did this solve the problem? For that day, it did.
On future days? I discovered that mentioning “forbidden playmate” usually brought them out of selfish-mode to willingly work out their disagreements. Some days I confiscated a toy when they fought over it and other times I asked if they wanted to be sent to different rooms to play by themselves.
What they learned as pre-schoolers stayed with them through the years. There were times I’d hear one of them say, “We better work this out or Mama won’t let us play together!”
You win some, and you lose some. This time, I won. Matter of fact, we all won.
Photo credit: pixabay.com
