(I am assuming that the same group meets regularly and you just rotate hosting duties)

Address all the parents and say something like: “I’m wondering what we should do if something gets damaged at one of our homes? Should the responsible family offer to pay to replace/repair it or should we all contribute to a “damage” fund that can be used under such circumstances? What do you all think?”

By addressing the entire group the “offending” family will not feel targeted (but maybe a little guilty!) and other adults may offer additional suggestions that would work.

I’m also in a similar situation where my husband’s cousin is very selfish and spoils her son. When they come over, the son keeps wanting to play with my husbands special toy car collection that he’s expressed several times for no one to touch, but the mom (my husband’s cousin) actually grabs it for him. I didn’t say much before since I didn’t want to create a stir, but no one else was stepping in so last time I finally put my foot down and said in a stern but pointed note it needs to be put back. Then I placed it back. Then the cousin goes and literally grabs another car. I am also at a total loss. If I ever explode on her I’m sure I’ll be saying not just a few nasty words but something about her needing to step up as a parent, which is going to make family gatherings so so awkward in the future. The older generation (husbands parents, uncles and aunts) have tried to gently suggest things but the cousin would say not to yell at her son, or just let him be. She’s purposely coddling her son.

Such moments around other oblivious-or-worse parents are so hard. I try to give them a house-rules spin: “In our house, this is off limits.” You wouldn’t let a kid play with the stove; treat whatever the off-limits thing is like the stove. Sooner the better to establish these limits, as the longer time goes on, the more awkward it’ll be. Set the precedent as early as possible. In our house, we had our son put away important toys before company. We would tell him that any toys not put away had the potential to be broken by a guest, so as he got older, he made choices accordingly. If one of his little friends was purposefully rough with a toy, I would remove it and tell the kids that if we can’t play with this in a way that doesn’t break it, we will put the toy away. (That requires paying closer attention to the gaggle of playing kids that the adults might want to!) I have found that being clear about these limits has helped my child stand up to his friends about them as he gets older. If one particular kid is always breaking things, I would talk to the parent, because it will only get worse as the kid gets older and limits aren’t enforced in your house. If that’s just beyond awkward, consider putting away anything breakable (so annoying, yes) and offering wooden food toys or something they can’t break.

Sometimes I find it easier with toddlers to set up a few super appealing things ahead of time, and tuck other stuff away as much as possible. Like leave out legos, playdoh, and some not easily broken pretend play stuff. Maybe time consuming snacks? Have the kids peel their own oranges or put Cheerios on pipe cleaners or something? Parents are trickier lol 😂

Maybe I’m outting myself as the mom whose kid breaks toys – but what do we mean by “break”? My kids are still very young so their toys can’t really be broken per se. and I expect that they are going to be destructive. If they actually broke something of value (a lamp or something) at someone’s house, I would offer to replace. But when my son has a playdate and his friend (or rather, my friends kid) “breaks” his Duplo creation, I don’t consider that actionable even if my son is crying. And I would feel pretty put out if another parent said something to me about similar behavior in my kid.

I might pass the mic (so to speak) to my kid. If I see my kid upset by their toy broken, I might help them find the words that I’m struggling to find. Saying to my kid, “you didn’t like it when X broke your toy. Let’s go talk to them. You can tell them that it makes you sad when your toys are broken and that you hope they will treat them better next time.“ maybe even adding, “It’s not fun to play with someone who breaks the toys all the time and doesn’t say sorry or try to make it right.”

I also echo the sentiments about parenting other kids (especially in your own home) the way you would parent your own. If it’s a friend’s kid, I would talk to them as I would my own if they broke something at my house.

It really is a challenging question. But I think by navigating it and trying to approach it head on, you model for your own kids how to stand up for themselves. Good luck!

I do the same thing of asking my child what toys they don’t want to share or which ones are too special and we put those away. If you have expectations of other people and their children, you have to be clear up front. You could try leading by examples that they might not follow your example in paying for broken toys. You have to establish your boundaries and let the group know beforehand. I think if you come to your friends and say we are really working on sharing or taking turns or not throwing so I’m going to be disciplining my kid when I see this action can you please do the same to model to my child. I think most parents will say yes. That’s something we want to work on also. Whether it’s a time out or a conversation about how it’s not nice to take other people’s things, your friends will handle it a different way, but at least they’re showing some intervention to your own child. In regards to breaking toys or your wall. Have that conversation but you might get some responses that say we do not care about our toys. If our toy is broken in a play date it is put in the trash and we deal with the crying. So you will have to come as a group to an agreement. In all honesty, there are some little kids that I do not enjoy having playdates with because of the different temperaments. Usually with age or little distance kids grow so quickly that play dates are not called off forever.

If toys are getting broken by toddlers, it was likely going to happen eventually anyway, if not by your current toddler then by another guest or future sibling. Most toddler toys are either pretty indestructible or pretty temporary/inexpensive. Hide the heirlooms and get used to the rest being temporary.

That said, it would be best for the parents to apologize and offer to replace the broken toys. I would not bring it up, though. The value of these toys is less than the value of your friendships. Rather, model what you’d like to see, by making a point to apologize and replace things that you or your kid breaks. You’re all new to parenting, so everyone in this group is looking to each other for role models of what’s normal and appropriate. If you do it, it will probably catch on.

Correcting toddlers’ behavior, though, is only marginally developmentally appropriate. Some general instruction like “don’t throw things indoors” is fine to try, but don’t get your hopes up for compliance. Specific physical interventions like “I see you want to hit the table with this toy, but I don’t want it to break, so I’m going to take it away and give you something else” are great parenting. But they require constant proximity and attention that may be more or less practical depending on the layout of the space and how deep into adult conversation the parents want to try to get in the meantime. I don’t know the specifics of your situation, but much “correction” that would be appropriate for a 4 year old is not appropriate or effective for a 1-2 year old. Things are going to get broken, and that’s the cost of doing business.

Most of these comments seem to come from a point of concern that you’ll lose friends. Do you really want friends who don’t respect your and your family’s boundaries? Tell them if something is broken beyond use it needs to be replaced of of respect. When you go to others’ homes, ask proactively what their house rules are so you also show them respect and expectations are known.

A lot of the comments are coming from the perspective of the parents of children whose toys are being broken with judgement or shame being shown to those parents. I’m a parent of a 22 month old with a speech delay, who is often the one responsible for not sharing or being hard on toys. My child is in speech therapy and gets push in services at his school, but we are still working with a communication delay. In a group setting, I can do a lot to prevent toys from getting broken, but there are going to be things that I miss, and until I can communicate clearly with my child, there are only so many boundaries and rules I can enforce, especially in a group setting. I think we can hold other parents and children accountable while also giving lots of grace to parents and children, especially neurodivergent children! If a parent is doing their best to stay consistent with their expectations with their child, I think that’s really all we can ask for and then expect for toys to be played with, hard or not.

As a former preschool teacher, I often find myself in group play date situations saying to the other parents “do you mind if I put my classroom hat on for this?” 10/10 times they are happy to pass the baton off to someone else.

I would take the offending child over to the broken toy, and ask them how it feels now that the toy is broken (sad, mad, happy, etc) and then direct those feelings to the owner of said toy and try to broker some sort of apology and peace treaty. Once I had refereed the children, I would return to the parent group and relay the state of the toy. “Well, I think that one is unsalvageable, someone might want to go confiscate anything similar” or “I hope that wasn’t valuable, it might need to be replaced.” Or even “I think it can be fixed with a little superglue.”

I am also a conflict avoider in my own relationships, so I agree it would be awkward and uncomfortable to feel like I needed to *ask* for replacements or repayment. I would be hoping for the offending family to take a hint, and unhelpfully maybe offer some passive aggressive commentary 🤣 I realize this is immature and unhelpful, thats why I was a preschool teacher and didn’t work with adults!

Everyone is mentioning how indestructible toddler toys are, because that’s the example that was given… But this is about more than broken toys. This is about shared expectations and conflict/conflict avoidance. If it’s not broken toys, it might be children hitting each other (which some people might view as just rough housing) or other behaviour that’s viewed as acceptable by one set of parents and not by another.

This needs a conversation about establishing shared expectations about how conflict will be handled more broadly. Do you get to step in when you see behaviour you feel is unacceptable, whether someone else does or not? What are the consequences for breaking boundaries? Will parents be responsible more broadly? I would do this both generally and specifically – establishing shared expectations for the group, and also speak directly to the parents who are repeatedly not taking responsibility for broken items. This isn’t about the toddlers – this is about the adults behaviour.

I always start from a place that people are an expert in their own child. Generally, when parents aren’t correcting their kid, I’ve found it’s because they’ve learned that it’s ineffective and maybe even counterproductive for that kid. I’ve got one of those, and having people judge my parenting when he was small (before he gained the skills not to break toys) was so demoralizing and difficult.

I don’t use apologies much, because they don’t fix anything. When my kids apologize to me, I’ve occasionally (reflexively, regrettably) snapped “I don’t care how YOU FEEL about what you just did to me. What are you going to do to fix it?!” But the healthy version of that frustration is a desire for redress and to avoid a repeat in the future. When my kids cause harm, I tell them they have two options: ask how they can help fix it, or explain what they’ll do differently next time so this doesn’t happen again. It’s future-focused and tries to actually address the harm. And sometimes, when they ask how they can help, “Say sorry” is the response, and that’s okay. Some people like to hear it. I’m just not one of them.

But it’s hard (and ineffective and awkward) to lecture other parents about how you want them to behave in your home. I’ve navigated similar stuff by;
– Prior discussion: “my only reluctance to this play date is how wild the kids get. When they leave, my house is wrecked. What if you prep them by saying every hour, we’re going to spend 5 minutes doing a cleanup song?”
– Being the example: if my kid is too wild, I intervene and do my thing in a visible way. It can remind people to do the same.

But mostly, I found my peace in letting other people choose their parenting strategy without my (even silent) opinions. When I have problem-solving energy, I direct it at my own family. There is so much freedom in not caring what other people do. I could sing a song about it. Obviously, that means you have to put the things away, or get serious about directing activities (“today we’re doing an obstacle course outside!”) or even make the parents aware but still leave the Fixing Ball in their court (“let’s keep the kids outside this time. Last time, X toy got broken and we had some tears. I want the kids to enjoy their time together.”) And trust that people do things for reasons. There’s probably a reason they don’t correct the kid. Maybe open a conversation about how difficult discipline can be and see what you learn about their experience.

How I parent in a group is this: Parenting is hard. I try to high five them, help them, or get out of the way.