how to help/teach 4 yo to play with toddler?

[titania8]

i am having a heck of a time with my twins (4yo) and their little brother. baby is 13 months. and of course, he wants to play with and be with his big brothers. he grabs their things (mostly trains/tracks/trucks) and they scream. i don't really know whether i should insist they include him (and what would that look like and how to do it???) or just take him off somewhere and do something else with him. eventually they will all need to get along and play together--but how does that happen? is there something i need to be doing? or is it a natural progression? i want to foster healthy sibling relationships, i just don't know how.

[SundayCrepes]

What was suggested to me that worked really well was to play with them all together. You role model how to play. "Here baby, you bang together these two pieces of train track while we put these others together." "Oh, watch out everyone, here comes Tornado Baby, how funny."

Sometimes big kids do need freedom from baby so I take the baby away. Other times I tell my son, "You need to play together. How can WE (yes, we) do that?"

[Vancouver Mommy]

Sometimes when dd is playing with younger children it helps to give her a "job" to do. She enjoys the feeling of being older and wiser so we might ask her to help the baby with a puzzle or "teach" the baby how to do something.

[titania8]

great ideas, thanks!

[AllisonR]

It's a juggling act, you have to do both!

When my DD was wanting to play with DS, but only frustrating him by ruining his blocks, forts... I did several things:
1. played with both of them and modeled gentle behaviour, and since I was there, I cut pull her before she was able to ruin his stuff. Stuff like play dough, legos, painting....
2. let them play alone at things that were less destructible. Often she wanted to just be there in the room with him, parallel play. So he was playing on the computer, she would watch for 2 minutes, then walk off to look at a book.
3. Gave DS his own space. We rarely use the dining room table, so I put his "project items " like magnets, small lego sets... up there, where he could get on a chair and reach them and play in peace, and DD had to play on the ground. She would get a bit mad about it, but I would distract her with something else, and I think DS needed this space sometimes.

And time solves a lot. Now my DS is 5 and my DD is 3. Because they can play at mostly the same level, and are now the best of friends.