When children take our things without us wanting them [what we do and what we say to them]

Explaining that the object is important to us, or that it might break, or that we don’t want it to be lost, and extracting a promise from the child that he won’t take it again, is unlikely to move the child, let alone make him respect our wish and not do it again. He is not yet capable of understanding the cause-effect relationship and the logical thinking required for such a thing.

So, this method is not going to bring us results. What can we do instead?

As soon as he takes something of ours that we do not want him to take, we can simply tell him exactly that, that ‘this is mine and I do not want you to take it, I am only using it.’ The child must respect the right we have to our things, just as we naturally respect his corresponding right to his things.

If he takes it again, we simply take it from his little hands and put it back in its place. If he tries to take it from its place, we should put it somewhere out of his reach, thus showing that we are firm in our stance and that we mean that we want the object that belongs to us to stay in its place. If our manner is friendly and we do not offend the child in any way, the child will soon understand that we are serious and adamant on this particular issue, and so he will give up.

Alternatively, we can explain our attitude to the child with a message – I, that is, with a message that expresses to the child how a behavior of theirs affects us.

‘When someone takes my things, I worry, because I know I may not find them when I need them.’

‘I don’t like my things being taken from me, because they may get lost or broken and then I will have to buy new ones.’

This method shows respect to the child, explains to him what the situation is from the parent’s side and puts him in a position of responsibility: if I lose mom’s/dad’s item, he will look for it, or he will have to get another one.

On the contrary, if we tell him, for example, ‘It’s bad that you take my things from me. Please, don’t do it again,’ (a message – you) in addition to directly blaming the child, it also ends with a command, which will reduce the child’s chances of cooperating.

Children, even at very young ages, fully understand the needs of a situation when we present them to them with respect and honesty. This makes them very willing to cooperate and much easier to learn through such opportunities what is expected of them in each situation.

Sometimes, one method alone will not be immediately effective. In this case, we can combine the two.

Our goal is for the child to get the message that we do not want him to take our things, without offending him, and without blaming him in any way.