Is it too early to teach about toy etiquette?

Not sure if this is the right place but mods please feel free to move.

This might sound odd but i would really like to teach DD about putting her toys away when she's finished, we had her 1st b'day on the w/end and she got HEAPS (actually thats an understatement) and i have spent about an hour sorting things into boxes and everything like that.

I have always rotated her toys so she is not playing with the same thing all the time, i would like to keep doing this and it helps i now have boxes with lids on them.
I want to show her that i put away some things before we get out others.

The hard part is we used to put out about 10 toys at a time to get her crawling, she sat from 5mths and didn't want to do anything else, so now she just goes from 1 toy to another without knowing anything different.

I guess i am saying NOW i am going to put things away a bit more as she goes, if she stops playing with a toy i am going to pack it away and maybe replace it with another, do you think it's too early for her to pick-up that that is what i'm doing?

Sorry if this makes no sense at all!

I don't think it's too early to start, although I'd definitely be making it a game and a fun thing to do together, rather than a chore.

The other thing to consider is putting at least some of the toys away for a time, so limiting the amount of mess that can be made at any one time, plus it retains novelty factor with the unseen toys when you do bring them out. I have about 3 "buckets" of stuff that I rotate around. I think that if there is too much choice, they end up being bored with it all, but if there's only a few things, then they actually have a better time playing with them, cos they're not overwhelmed with it all.

Nope I don't think it's too early. Juliette packs her toys away, welll kinda, she helps LOL!

Never too early, they are always watching/observing. I don't enforce cleaning up, but encourage DD to help. She seems to like it! Wonder how long that will last.....

Yeah i have put a lot of stuff in her new toybox, including some of her bigger toys (trains, keyboard, phones etc), it has a lid on it and she can't really get in.
Then she has her bigger toys which i can't really hide away but she goes between these at her own will.
I also have a seperate box now for her books, and another for her blocks and stacker cups etc.

She likes taking stuff out of the laundry basket and putting it back in for me so i think we will make it a game, that she help me put her blocks back etc...

Thanks girls... she shares her toys now i just need to teach her to pack them up after herself... hehe :p

Wow, she shares??? Perhaps she could teach my 2 year old to share! ;)

It is good though to let them have a combination of toys, especially ones that we would not use together. It is great for their imagination to combine toys. Whilst we might like the cars to be packed away before the blocks come out from a neatness point of view, they can learn so much from playing with the blocks and cars together. I suppose it is a balance between neatness and creativity.

Hehe Falguni most of the time! ;)

She even gives DP & I her dummy sometimes, she plays very well with the other kids from MG but like every kid she has her moments!

I doubt it will last long, she's getting the nice stuff out of the way now and then will turn into psycho girl... hehehe

Astrid... neatness is def not top of my list... lol i have one of those 'LIVED IN' houses, you know the one where it's hygienically clean but not spotless... lol :redface:

I just want her to know that it's nice to not have everything out at once, right now as we speak she is playing with her new wooden blocks and rolling a ball through anything she stacks... hehehehehe

Oh and the cheeky little girl has figured out how to get the lid off one of the boxes.... hmmmm

i think turning clean up into a game is a good idea. and teaching her that she doesn't need everything at once is best done early. i've seen kids that won't clean up, won't share (she is def doing well on that one), and expect everything out at once - it's a PITA and they don't appreciate anything at all...

E is only a few months old, but we're already talking to her the whole time we do things so that it makes sense - so while i'm putting away clothes i am telling her, while i'm putting the washing on, i explain - and we rotate the toys she plays with already so she doesn't get bored with them. once she's played a while, the novelty wears off and she throws it away so we swap it for something else. at the moment a rocking horse rattle and her pooh bear book she chews on are flavour of the day - yesterday they were nothing - she wanted her monkeys lol