Dominant Twin

I have 10 month old twin girls and recently one of them has become very much the dominant. She wants everything her sister has and aggressively does everything she can to get it. My approach up to this point has always been let them work out for themselves who will get what unless there is a huge breakdown but it seems that I need to step in. Do I? What do you all do when one twin is constantly taking everythign away from the other? Just let it happen? I'm just not sure what the best thing is to do so any advice would be welcomed.

THanks!

 

we've gone back and forth with the boys as they alternate between phases of dominance and submissiveness. for a while jacob was always grabbing what owen had and we noticed owen was starting to give up toys immediately if jacob asserted his opinion. we felt like it wasn't fair for owen to learn that his brother's needs came first so we started assessing each situation on a case by case basis and deciding what is a "share" situation and what is a "no share" situation.

so if owen has a ball and jacob demands it, we tell jacob no. if he tries to get at the ball again we move him back so that he's physically distanced from the toy. if owen tries to hand it over anyway we thank him and tell him he can keep it. now that they're older and more verbal we've introduced the idea of taking turns but during year 1 it really was a matter of stepping in and removing the demanding child from arm's reach of the demanded toy.

p.s. at 10 months old you could start introducing the idea of "time out" for the demanding one. keep it very brief, one minute per year of the child's age, so certainly no more than a minute.

 

This happened around 10 mos for mine too. I at first tried to distract because as an adult "stealing" is so wrong. I soon learned though that the supposedly "weaker" one would try to bait the toy stealer and then look at me. I decided that unless there was hitting going on I would let them work it out. The stealing lasted about 1-2 months and now they play pretty well. When the toy stealer approaches, my other LO decides whether she wants to give it up or fight for it. When she fights for it the toy stealer gives up almost instantly...pretty funny. My DH and I noticed a pattern we didn't like - we were always scolding the toy stealer and removing her. I read about conflict at this age and to be careful not to always pick on one, even if they are the aggressor. I found I felt much better if things got too out of hand to let them both know gently that I was going to remove the toy until they could play nice together, and then I hugged them both and had them hug each other. It became a game - think it helped a lot for this young age. As they get older there will be better tactics, when they can understand a bit more. Good luck. I remember this time hitting us out of the blue - we couldn't believe suddenly they were so aggressive...heh heh.

 

i only stepped in if it became violent. Danika was our toy stealer & while it irked my sense of fair play, Riley never seemed too terribly upset, so i often just let it go. once in a while though Riley would have enough & decide she wanted to keep a toy - sometimes it worked out peaceably, other times hitting, throwing or biting would start & then i would put the offending toy away for a time out & distract the girls with something else. GL!

 

oh yeah, gotta love the baiting. owen learned that trick, too. <_< that makes a "no share" item a "share" item tout suite.