Should Children Have to Share?
Sharing is a fundamental life skill crucial to a child's social development and future interactions. However, sharing is often misunderstood and confused with a child’s ability to compromise. In this article, I'll explore the various aspects of sharing, provide analogies to help understand its importance, and discuss the benefits and compromises associated with ownership.
Understanding The Concept Of Sharing
At its core, sharing involves dividing what one has with others, including allowing others to use one's possessions for a time. It's a simple concept for adults but can be very complex for children, who are naturally egocentric in their early years. Consider lending an expensive item to a friend to make this concept more relatable. You're not giving it away; you're allowing a shared use with your friend, trusting they'll care for it and return it unharmed, but there is risk. Those risks are quantifiable as an adult, and you can weigh the loss of the item to the value of the friend and their trustworthiness to replace the item should it be destroyed. But, a child may not be able to understand this bigger picture, and for them the item may seem more important than the relationship. Responsibility is a whole other topic.
The Benefits of Sharing
At Its Core: Sharing encourages children to let go of things and look to relationships for value. They can build and maintain friendships by showing kindesss to share and a willingness to trust. Just as adults bond over shared interests and experiences, children find common ground through shared toys and activities.
Sharing Develops Empathy: Children learn to consider others' feelings and perspectives by sharing. This is akin to when adults share workload or responsibilities to alleviate someone's burden, deepening mutual respect.
Sharing Encourages Teamwork: Sharing teaches children that collective effort can achieve greater results, much like how a team of professionals collaborates to complete a project more efficiently than one person could alone. Sharing isn’t always about giving up or dividing possessions. Rather, sharing demonstrates larger principles of division, such as distributing a workload or including others in a fun activity.
The Compromises of Ownership
Ownership can involve compromises. For children, this means understanding that while they may own a toy, sharing it can lead to benefits like friendship and fun. For adults, a similar compromise is seen in communal spaces or shared resources at work. Ownership provides control and responsibility, but also requires flexibility and consideration for others. If your child is having a playmate over for a play date, there may be certain toys that your child may want to put out of view, because they want to protect them from being mishandled or harmed. Yet, there needs to be some toys available for the play date to be fun. Discussing this with your child before the play date can prevent some undesirable conflicts. It’s unreasonable to share everything, but important to share some things. Sharing is not black and white, rather there are some gray areas. When teaching children to share, help them find the right balance.
Strategies for Teaching Sharing
Be Honest: Children shouldn’t have to share every time they call something their own, just as you shouldn’t have to. We don’t always share homes, cars, computers, clothing, and the like, so remember this when teaching this skill to a child. However, that doesn’t exclude them from the experience of allowing something they’re taking ownership of to be shared. When you provide toys and other items to your child, do so with clear instructions that certain items can or should be shared, and others can be off limits if they are really special. It is hypocritical if you tell your child not to touch something for fear they will harm it, and then turn around and force them to share something important to them that they fear will be harmed if they share it. Teach by example, and think before making rules for sharing. Show them what sharing looks like in your daily life, whether sharing an item, a meal, a task, or time with others. Sharing is giving a gift to someone else.
Praise Sharing Moments: Acknowledge and praise your child when they show the kindness of sharing, reinforcing the positive aspects of the experience and discuss any challenges they may have had with it. Most importantly, acknowledge the good feeling they feel inside when they share.
Create Sharing Opportunities: Set up play dates or cooperative games that naturally encourage sharing. Front load the experiences by agreeing on the items included in the sharing experience. Respect where your child is at, and avoid pushing their limits in order to teach a lesson.
Talk About Feelings: Discuss the emotions involved in sharing, such as making others happy, which can be likened to the joy adults feel in giving meaningful gifts. Let them know it is okay to feel the hard feelings as well as the joyful feelings.
Teach Turn-Taking: Use a timer or a visual aid to help children understand turn-taking, a basic form of sharing.
By embracing the value of sharing, we prepare our children for social interactions and a life enriched with meaningful relationships and collaborative successes. Sharing isn't just about material possessions; it's about opening our hearts and lives to others; there's no lesson more valuable than that. Sharing can be complex, so remember to relate it to adult sharing guidelines for proper comparison.
Kimberley Arnett-DeSimone, a career pediatric occupational therapist in Huntersville, North Carolina, authored this post.
