Drawing Straws

With Ken traveling again, the girls are up to their usual antics: fighting over any toy the other one decides she likes. This evening, the toy of choice was the Fisher Price Little People School Bus.

As they squabbled, it was a textbook girl fight including hair-pulling and skin scratching. I intervened to avoid the fangs leaving marks. My solution du jour was drawing straws.

I explained, "See this toothpick? I am going to break it into two pieces. One piece is short and the other is long. If you pick the long straw, you get to play with the bus first for five minutes. If you choose the short straw, you will play with the bus second - after the timer buzzes in five minutes. Understand?"

Smiling with the excitement of a new game, their heads bobbed affirmatively. I knew this would be a short-lived, fun game as the one who drew the short straw would fuss that about life not being fair.

Valerie chose her straw first, since she seemed to fully understood the game. Dagny just followed suit because she tends to go with the flow. Ewe... she drew the short straw, but she didn't know it yet.

Then it was Dagny's turn. We compared the two straws, noting that Dagny received the first opportunity to play with the bus. As Valerie complained that drawing straws isn't a very fun game, I set the timer and continued stacking the dinner dishes. The complaining died down and the timer rang five minutes later.

"Valerie it's your turn to play with the bus!" I shouted.

"Oh, I already played with it!"

Go figure!

I guess the other alternatives are to buy two of everything to avoid these fights. Or, we could separate and label all of the household toys into what belongs to Valerie and what belongs to Dagny. However, to me those alternatives just seem like the easy way out. As parents, aren't we supposed to teach our children out to interact with others? If they don't learn how to negotiate with their siblings and family members, the world will eat them alive, eh?

So, we'll stick to taking turns and drawing straws until I can come up with a better solution.