Reserved Seats

I think I might produce some 'Reserved' signs for the sofas in our lounge. Either that or completely remove the sofas from the room.

Every day, several times a day, my boys fight over who is going to sit in the most favoured space on the sofa.

"MUUUUUUM! Max/Toby/Jonah is in MY space on the sofa!!!! Tell him to MOOOOVE!!!" goes the cry at regular intervals.

My particular style of (lazy) parenting is to ignore this request and leave them to sort it out amongst themselves.

I don't despair though. This is nothing new, of course. My sister will remember the race for the green swivel chair when we were younger. Elbows, bottoms, shoulders, heads and sometimes teeth (yes, but not mine, honestly) were used to remove the offender who sat in the chair before us.

How do we teach our children to share and to put others before themselves? I have no answers. We teach the same things over and over again, and yet I wonder if they bounce off their 'already thinking about something else' brains.

Still, I have hope. These days I don't race my sister to the chair and try to budge her out of the way with my bottom. Although I would almost certainly win.