Our 25month old son goes to a day care. We have been quite happy with the quality of the care he's got. However, lately, as he starts to develop his language skills, it appears to us that the philosophy of that day care (or perhaps some particular caregivers?) is to encourage kids to keep their ''virtual'' space. When our son is upset, and doesn't want anyone to be close to him, he would shout ''Space!'', sometime even other kids approaching him friendly and he wasn't ready he then cries ''Space!'' In a few cases the caregiver would acknowledge my son's such needs of space, and discourage the other kid even he/she had meant to be friendly. It was amusing to us at beginning but now it starts to be annoying because as much as we respect our kid to have his own personality/need (even at this age), what we really don't want is he to be anti-social. Another day care provider from a different place seemed to confirm such child education philosophy being taught in her training class, but she also seemed to indicate that it may have been ''over''-used. I wonder if any parent experience similar thing and whether I should be concerned about this issue from the day care. Another question, our son seems to be quite possessive lately especially when we just had our relatives came over and stayed with us for a few days. They have a daughter (my son's cousin) who is of similar age. Last time when both children met they seem to play well together. This time they also played, however, it was clouded by my son declaring everything to be his ''That is MY train!'' ''That is MY mommy'', ''This is MY table'', even as much as ''This is MY cat'' when his cousin was fond of our kitty. We were really embarrassed as in NO way this is the way we have been trying to educate him. We are also wondering if this is something he gets from day care, or is it just the growing phase when he just now realized what/who belongs to whom? If so, will this behavior go away, or should we take some special measures to correct it? What are the effective measures?
a very concerned mom

Regarding ''space!'' -- I can see how this would be useful for a 2-year-old to express but personally I think it sounds rude. I would favor something a bit more sociable such as ''no thank you'' Ginger

About the personal space issue: I'm not sure if it's being over-used at your daycare, but I do know why they're doing it: to keep the kids from being physically aggressive. It's better for a kid to yell ''space'' than to hit, kick, or bite a kid who comes close when he doesn't want them to. And this is an age when a lot of hitting, kicking, and biting happens, even from fairly gentle kids -- since most of them don't know any other way of saying ''I don't want to play with you right now.'' You might want to talk with the caregivers if you feel it's being overused; it's really important that you and the caregiver be on the same page with this. Karen

With the Mine, that is really common at that age. In order for kids to learn how to share, they first go thru a stage of realizing that they actually have posessions of their own. So labeling everything as mine is a way to practice that concept. As embarassing as it can be in the moment, I tried to reframe things for him (and the other parties present) by saying something like 'Yes, the kitty lives in our house' and then 'your cousin is very interested in our kitty. We all love to pet her furry body.' Soon enough he will start to understand that just as he has posessions, so do other kids. Sharing can only come when he understands and has had experience with seeing that when he gives up a toy, it does come back to him. FOrcing sharing only breeds contempt I think. He will come to see that sharing brings rewards like trades for other toys, longer playtimes, and joint games. Jen