Post #41 Summertime tips: Siblings struggling to share?

The summertime break from school gives your children more time to play. However, it is not always easy for siblings to play together and to share play activities and resources. 

A common concern and frustration for families is lack of sharing and co-operation between siblings, especially when one (or more) are autistic. There are simple steps you can take to help your child(ren) to develop skills which are precursors to sharing and which may result in greater enjoyment of activities. 

Social skills and play typically develop in stages. Children move through these stages as they develop. Note the stages which come before children start to share:



Great emphasis is often placed upon sharing and taking turns in schools and other settings as these are necessary social skills in the learning environment. However, sharing and following social rules can be difficult if a child is at an earlier stage of development. If you are experiencing difficulties in getting your autistic child and siblings to share when playing at home, you can support their development by structuring activities/resources which encourage steps towards these important social skills. 

Play should be enjoyable - if sharing toys is stressful or difficult for your child then they will not enjoy playing. Remove the demands of sharing and encourage parallel play which your child(ren) may find more comfortable and enjoyable. Parallel play is valuable and some children benefit from more opportunities at this stage of development. Don't feel that this is a step back, rather you are fostering ways to enrich your child's development. 

You can encourage parallel play by setting up play activities without expecting your children to share toy items. For example,  your children may enjoy playing with Lego but are not able to share and fall out over the bricks. A simple way to turn this into parallel play is to provide each child with their own Lego bricks. Label containers of Lego with each child's name so there is no requirement to share.


This simple strategy reduces the stress of sharing and encourages parallel play where your children are playing alongside each other and have opportunities to watch what each other is doing. Moreover, reduction of the stressful requirement to share may also lead to associative play where your children comment on and ask questions about each others' play (in this case Lego building and models). If your autistic child is playing in parallel with an older sibling who is able to share and co-operate, you might suggest that while they are playing they could make show their model to their sibling, comment and ask questions. This encourages your autistic child to pay attention to what their sibling is doing and to show and/or discuss their own model. If you try this and find your children can play in parallel, then you can apply the same strategy to lots of activities. For example, set up 2 sets of resources for a cooking activity or for painting/arts & crafts. 

If playing/interacting in parallel is more successful for your children, add a next step towards sharing by introducing a shared finished container. Your children have their own resources in named containers and are encouraged to put anything they have finished using into the shared finished container. This could be a box or basket which you label finished. For example, in a shared cooking activity to make pizzas, your children would each have their own recipe items, visual instructions if appropriate for your child and utensils.  A washing up bowl would make an ideal finished container:

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Activities set up like this encourage your children to work and play in parallel. This may result in a more enjoyable activity as sharing is not required, but at the same time you are supporting your children to develop social skills in parallel as an important precursor to sharing. 



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