Yes, I took our littles' toys away.... again!

Before Christmas, I wrote a blog post about how I put all the toys in 'toy jail' as a result of the littles not keeping their room clean and not putting their toys away.

A happy side effect of this drastic measure was..... the girls didn't bicker and fight nearly as much.  Plus.... their room WAS clean.

As Christmas approached and they received NEW toys, we allowed them to keep those gifts out AND bring their bucket of ponies back from toy jail.

All was well for a while.

Then.....

It....

Started!

The snapping, yelling, crying, whining.

Why?

T-O-Y-S!!!!

You'd think they'd be thrilled to have toys to play with again.

You'd think having their 'own' new toys would enable peace to prevail.

But... NO!

"I want, she has, she took, it's mine, I had it first......" was what greeted my ears most days.

So..... I did it again!

All. Toys. Went. To. Toy. Jail!!!!

Yes, almost immediately the bickering decreased.

They pulled out their crayons, paper, puzzles, and books.

They blew up balloons and drew faces on them. They bapped them in the air back and forth.  They pretended they were a family and sat them at the table for 'dinner'.

They used their imaginations.

Granted, the occasional squabbles still broke out, but it was no longer the CONSTANT battle over toys. Toys that are so similar it boggles my mind they COULD fight over them.  If one toy was BASICALLY the same as the other toy, what was the big deal?  Why fight?  Why get upset?

I couldn't begin to claim to understand what their little minds thought, so...... for now..... the toys went away.

The plan for getting toys back in the future will look much different than it ever has in the past.

No more 'free for all' with the toys.  They will be up, out of reach.  A request will need to be made for a particular type of toy.  THAT object/set of objects will be brought down.  When they are done with THAT set, clean up will occur, it will be put back away BEFORE anything new can join the fun.

Yes, this is going to be a lot more labor intensive on my and the older kids part, yet, the lack of complaining, the joy of hearing our girls get along will be WELL worth it.

What tips do you have for preventing sibling rivalry and disputes?