Social Skills

Helping your child share toys and take turns

A friend reaches for the favourite toy, and everything stops. Sharing asks a young child to hold their own wish and someone else's at the same time — that is genuinely hard.

Create a Story for This Challenge

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What your child may be practising

Noticing that another child also wants a turn
Waiting through the uncomfortable in-between moment
Asking for a turn with words instead of grabbing
Discovering that a turn given away comes back

How a Maple Kids story approaches it

1The story opens on a sharing moment your child will recognize.
2The hero — your child — tries a small, age-appropriate way through it.
3The Parent Guide gives you questions to ask while you read.
4One tiny turn-taking practice follows the reading.

Story preview · Page 4

Donya's hands wanted to hold the blocks forever. But she looked at Sam's face, took a big breath, and said, “Your turn next.”

Parent Guide preview

What this page is doing

Helping the child notice another child's feeling before choosing what to do.

Ask

“How do you think Sam felt while he waited?”“What did Donya do with her big wanting feeling?”

Words to repeat

“You can want it and still give a turn. Your turn comes back.”

Try it in real life

Play one short turn-taking game today and say “your turn / my turn” out loud.

Why stories can help with this

Stories, Empathy & Prosocial Behavior
A randomized study of four- to five-year-old children found that repeated shared reading of socially themed picture books was associated with improvements in empathy and prosocial behavior.
Chen H, Lyu D, Zhu L. “The effectiveness of social-themed picture book reading in promoting children's prosocial behavior.” Frontiers in Psychology. 2025.
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1569925
Shared Reading & Development
The American Academy of Pediatrics states that shared reading can support parent-child relationships and social-emotional, cognitive, language and literacy development.
Klass P, Miller-Fitzwater A, High PC, et al. “Literacy Promotion: An Essential Component of Primary Care Pediatric Practice.” Pediatrics. 2024;154(6):e2024069090.
DOI: 10.1542/peds.2024-069090

These studies examine shared reading and picture books in general. They did not test Maple Kids. Maple Kids is an educational parenting tool and not medical, psychological, diagnostic or therapeutic care.

Read the Research

Ready to build a story around sharing toys?