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Teach your child how to share

Sharing is a foreign concept to most toddlers and preschoolers. Here's how to help your child understand what it's all about

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Originally published in Today's Parent February 2012

Your toddler’s playroom is bursting with toys, yet whenever a friend comes over, your son wants whichever neglected toy his pal reaches for. A struggle ensues, and soon the fun and laughter are replaced by tears and tantrums.
    
Sound familiar? Rest assured — sharing is a concept beyond the grasp of most toddlers. “Toddlers are much more interested in finding out what it means to say ‘Mine’ than ‘Let’s share a few things,’” says Betsy Mann, an Ottawa-based parent educator. “Sharing is learned as children’s social, emotional and cognitive development increases.”   

Cathy McMillan, mom to two-year-old Olin, can relate. “To him, sharing is taking stuff away from other people,” says McMillan, of Kimberley, BC. “He can’t conceptualize sharing. If he wants something, he just wants it.”

But you can have higher expectations of kids once they hit kindergarten. At four, children start becoming capable of taking on someone else’s point of view, notes Mann. “You can say, ‘How would you feel if your friends hogged all the toys and didn’t want to give you one?’ But that has absolutely no meaning to a two-year-old,” she says. Even the word “share” can be confusing. Parents often use it to describe different situations that actually bear little resemblance to one another, Mann points out. For example, asking your child to share a blanket, where he doesn’t have to take turns or give anything away, is very different from sharing a toy, which means taking turns, or sharing a cookie, where your child has to give half of it away and doesn’t get that half back. It’s important for parents to recognize the situation and adjust expectations accordingly.

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