Sharing toys at the pool? (and other places)

Put her initials, or your last name, on each of her pool toys with permanent marker. She's still too young to be hanging out at the pool by herself so it falls to the adult in charge to scope out the scene and keep a mental inventory of what items were taken out of the pool bag to begin with. She can also be limited to the number of toys she has out at any one time, say two or three. You can teach her to bring back the ones she's done with before she moves on to another one. If that means getting it back from Sally, who got it from Susie, who got it from... then it gives her a chance to meet Sally and explain she needs to put her toy away now.

Also, buy really cheap pool toys so that it wont break the bank if one or two ends up going home with Susie.

Yep to all of those.

Target's one dollar spot is chock-full of pool toys right now (in Columbus, anyway.) At a dollar for a set, I'm less concerned if they disappear.

But the permanent marker worked well for us. I have occasionally had to engage in "a-HEM"ing when a toy turns up on some family's towel and the parent says "oh, it's ours..." The initials usually resolve that.

I didn't use initials when they were very young, but a sign they invented- they could "read" that.
They packed their toys themselves and so they knew what they had with them.
Mostly we met the same children on the playground, and soon everyone knew which toy belonged to Peter,Tom, or Susie and they were returned.
Not by the parents, but by the children.

Mark toys and beachwear if you want to be able to prove it's yours. It's rare, but disputes over goggles and rubber slippers happen as well as toys... My big thing is breaking the toys. We just had a little boy we know run off w/my swim noodle and use it for a dog's chew-toy at the beach last weekend. I won't be using it to float w/again after it getting all gnawed up. The boy didn't even think to come over and apologize; I had to call him over and ask him what he did and why he thought that sort of treatment of another's stuff was okay! In past years, we've had things buried and lost, popped, broken by mishandling, so from here on out, I plan to quiz any child wanting to borrow my~our stuff on how s/he intends to use it, and for how long, etc. So far, and we've gone to the beach a couple times since then + the pool twice, so good.

I'd use initials on personal property.

Kids get very possessive about M.N. when "M.N" means "my name".


Private property can be a very tedious concept--but it is a necessary one.

Our pool situation is further complicated by the pool providing a nice selection of toys -- every kid thinks every thing they see is fair game.

Misunderstandings about what is the pool's and what is personal led to many fights and temper tantrums.

I resolved it by deciding that the pool was a big enough toy in itself and Mo is no longer allowed to take toys.

I doubt my plan is the answer for anyone else but it does work for us.