How to Encourage Sharing Between Twins from an Early Age

It’s feels blessed to have twins in your life. They fight, they create havoc and then they make you feel alive and important.

Just like you, I also have twins and both had problems sharing things between them from a very early age.

Twins might share the same womb and probably the same crib, but they have their own individuality.

From my experience, I have 6 different strategies that you can use to encourage sharing and caring between your twins.

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1. Get them to learn about kindness and fairness

Being kind and fair is not always natural. You as a parent need to emboss these traits into your children right from the start.

I started by telling them stories of kindness. Stories of people who lived happily because they were kind and caring for others.

Get them to know how good it feels to share something with others.

Your twins will still fight and compete for the same things. The long term result will likely change and you can see they willing to share their things without dispute.

Tell your child that if she shares her toy with her sibling, there’s something even better for her.

2. Don’t force sharing- give room for individuality

Twins are more likely to share things with each other. But constant sharing can also make them obsessed with the sense of self.

They need to have certain things of their own. It will give them more security and decrease the obsession over shared things.

You can buy different toys for both of your twins and let them keep it separately.

If you buy a gift for them, always buy two. So, they won’t fight over it.

Forcing to share constantly will make their relationship worse over the years. And they might even start to hate each other in their minds.

Balance both sharing and individuality for a better upbringing.

3. Provide shared toys and living room

The simplest way to encourage sharing between twins is to provide shared things.

You can give them toys that they can play together and take turns. In that way, they will learn to share through playing.

I had great success with my little ones when I bought them a bunk bed. Both shared the same space but still had a bit of individuality.

You can give them chocolates and let them share with each other.

4. Encourage self-regulated turns

The idea of taking turns to play or have a thing is great for encouraging sharing.

But there’s a catch!

If twins are taking turns just because you told them, they will become restless.

Your child should do it willingly and other one must wait for it willingly.

The way you can do it is called ‘Self-Regulated Turns’.

Imagine one of your twins is playing with a toy. Let her play as long as she desires. And then teach the other child to wait and play with something else.

This strategy teaches:

The other child that you don’t need to cry for getting what you need.
The one with the toy to feel satisfied and then wait long for her turn.

5. Let them complete a task together

Twins have a nag to compete for everything from turning the lights off to getting the TV on.

You can encourage them to complete a task together but both will have unique things to do.

These examples might help:

Let one child to turn the lights off and the other to turn them on
Tell them to clean up their room and assign different tasks.
Get a color book and let them share the same color pencils and fill up the drawings together.

In this way, the need to compete will decrease and they will start caring for each other.

6. Let them quarrel but involve them in a solution strategy

Most parents start yelling at their children when they fight over certain things.

But that’s not a good idea.

If one of your twins is denying to share something, you need to get involved with them.

You need to talk to them about the solution. Show them that you understand their problem and you want to help them.

In this way, your children will feel involved. This will help them to solve the problem and understand from other’s point of view.