Recently, I went to a park with my daughter. There were 9 children playing on the equipment, riding scooters and throwing around a ball. In the 18 minutes I was at the park, There were 7 parents watching these kids. Those parents used the word “share / sharing” 23 times in my 18 minutes of park time. I would bet it was the most frequently used word outside of a child’s name. You probably would have heard the word less in an investing club or the weekly husband/wife swap in my neighborhood.
We’re all obsessed with making sure our kid shares their toys, the playground equipment, the ball and really anything other than communicable diseases. Even with all that focus, it’s very rare to see a child south of 8 years old that actually shares in the way we’re all imploring our children to. And when you do, you remark to the parent like their child has developed cold fusion, “Evan is an UNBELIEVABLE sharer! I just can’t get over the fact he let Peter play with his fire truck for 11 seconds before forcefully pulling it back.” The bar is low here people!
While we’re bad at getting our children to do it, we certainly care about sharing, as a google search for “how do I encourage sharing,” returns a billion-plus results. While 75% of those are certainly porn, there’s a lot of people willing to give you an opinion on this topic. Well let me throw my proverbial hat in the proverbial ring with some tips of my own.
- You’re fighting evolution & conditioned feelings on ownership – Every scrap of evidence that you have says this is a difficult skill to teach your child, including this nugget, distilled by marketwatch from a study in Cognition:
That sense of ownership and sharing, which can encourage people to own their home rather than rent and overspend rather than save and participate in the sharing economy, starts at an early age. Children as young as 3 are able to make judgments about who owns an object, according to a study released this week from the University of Waterloo. What’s more, they can intuitively determine who owns what by watching people interact with various objects.
So even small kids know a lot about ownership but haven’t yet grasped the concept of lending, or even which objects are lendable. For instance, if someone stole your wallet on the street, should your child yell at you when you tackle the person to try and get it back? Think of all of the knowledge and concepts you need to grasp just to get to “No” for the question I just asked. All that to say, sharing isn’t nearly as straightforward as we want to make it. Best of all, we’re frustrated when the child, WHO STILL CRAPS IN THEIR PANTS MULTIPLE TIMES PER DAY, doesn’t understand sharing. Give your child, and yourself, a break when it comes to learning this simple-looking but very tough skill.
- Model sharing & make sure your children see it – The best way I’ve found to get this complicated point across is to model the behavior myself. And when I’m modeling the behavior, try and make it clear to your children that sharing is taking place. There have been multiple times in recent…minutes… that I’ve done the exact opposite of what would be considered good sharing. Obviously, there will be times when sharing isn’t practical. “No you can’t use my vape pen right now. You know that’s only a Friday thing,” for instance. But whenever you can and it’s practical, both model and call out good sharing behavior. Extra points if you can model sharing outside the home and provide additional context for your little guys and gals. Ultimately, knowing when to share comes from life experience and context, most of which comes from you, dear parent.
- For the cheap shit, buy 2 – You’ve done the hard work above, but sometimes you just need to move closer to the basket to give yourself an easier shot. If you have one of your children at Walgreens and she asks for 50 cents for a sticky-stretchy-glow-in-the-dark-shit-this-thing-is-sick hand thing, think ahead to the inevitable child-on-child violence and just give her $1 and get a sticky-stretchy hand thing for each of your children. Sometimes throwing money at the problem is the exact right solution.
- No one is thinking what you think they’re thinking – As hard as it is to believe, the parent of the child from which your child just stole the ball isn’t actually APPALLED by your child’s behavior. They’re laughing inside and wondering if their child is going to allow him/herself to get punked or if they’re coming back hard for that ball. This is especially true because every single parent has seen their child perform hundreds of acts of petty larceny and retaliation for attempted petty larceny. Before you react out of pure unadulterated embarrassment, at least consider how you’d feel if the children’s shoes were on the other foot and your child had just gotten a ball stolen out of their hands. You may be a little annoyed, but not to the point you’re hoping the other parent comes in, yells at their child and gives them 10 hard minutes under the enclosed jungle gym.
Any other ideas, dear reader? Add them to the comments! When all else fails, you can consult Daniel Tiger. At times I really do beleive my children would be in better hands in his custody.
Chris Jordan