Teaching my little girl to share

[Deleted User]

I've hit a bit of a dilemma with my attempts at teaching my 2 year old about sharing rather than hording. It started when I put 15 coloured pencils on the table the other night so we could create a masterpiece together. She quickly gathered all the pencils in her hands so I was left with nothing to draw with. When I asked for a pencil she said "no they're mine". To cut a long story short I worked with her over the next 30 minutes to highlight the advantages of sharing the pencils and we ended up creating some superb, no holds barred multi-coloured animal pictures together.

The moral of my story was that "it's better to share rather than grab everything for yourself".

Today when I went to pick her up from the nursery (that shares her with me!) I took a look in her daily activities book and was proud to see a comment from one of the carers - "we went out in the garden and she shared all of her toys with the other children which was wonderful to see". I was so proud of her and it was a joy to see how my efforts had paid off.

However, when I asked her about her sharing experience she told me that when she shared the other children took all her toys so she had nothing to play with. She was a bit upset about it. Obviously they're all toddlers and I wouldn't really expect them to be masters on the concept of sharing at this age but it got me thinking how much this experience is mirrored in adulthood. This is particularly so nowadays when so many people think that we were put on this earth to look only after number one.

So, whilst teaching the joys of sharing I was wondering whether I should:

- allow her to learn herself about the pro's and con's of this concept and make her own choices?
- add a phase II to the learning course e.g. "by the way, don't overshare or people will try to take advantage"?
- explain to the nursery what I've done with my own little girl and could they do a bit of the same with all the children as it will pay back handsomely in terms of tantrums?
- see a therapist as I'm clearly deranged?
- something else?

As we're genuinely a sharing bunch here (although, if I win the Aston Martin I'm not sharing it with you lot!) how would you approach this?

Rachie_B

sorry to tell you but children dont generally understand / learn the concept of "sharing" properly until the are 3 yrs old


keep encouraging her but dont overcomplicate the whole " over sharing " thing,be pleased she appears to have mastered it before her peers

dont worry about it ,she is only 2 after all !

davsidipp

it brings back memories of my daughter when i used to say to her can i have one of your sweets and i would put my hand in the bag and she would grab the bottom of the bag to stop me taking too many,we joke about it now and say what a greedy little moo she was but as long as you let them know there not sharing without making a big issue out of it she will get there.

super41

I wouldn't worry at 2 years, my DD is still a reluctant sharer and she's 5! It's not through want of encouraging her to share etc. and we lead by example, I think its just a maturity thing. Hopefully she'll become more sharing as she gets older and now she's started school where I know they encourage this.

Scarlett1

davsidipp wrote:

it brings back memories of my daughter when i used to say to her can i have one of your sweets and i would put my hand in the bag and she would grab the bottom of the bag to stop me taking too many

my DD used to do that :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the feedback - I'm not over concerned at this stage as I agree that children don't usually get to grips with this until later but just curious. She's 3 in a few weeks and very bright (of course!) so above all else I'm really pleased that she practised sharing straight away when I wasn't really expecting her to.

However, as great as she is, she doesn't share my Aston Martin when I win it either