ISSUE: To Share or Not to Share?

This weekend I wondered WHOSE child IS this….??? If you recall, we went to Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster, PA, with my friend, Morning, and her daughter, Cheyanne. We had such a great time!!!! More on that later……

But I was so disappointed when Kwabi started exhibiting aggressive behavior: snatching away every toy of his that Cheyanne (who’s 3 weeks younger than Kwabi) even touched. “MY books!”…..”MY train!”…..”MY doggie!”

It gets old REAL QUICK…..

It was exhausting trying to talk to him reasonably (um, yeah, talking reasonably to a 2 year old with their own agendas…..) to a 2-year-old that doesn’t want to share. I wondered if I was asking too much of him, or if he was just showing unacceptable behavior.

So I put him in time out, then spoke to him about sharing…..all the while he defiantly crossed his arms, gave me looks that he told me is his “batman face” (I’m not shitting you!! His “batman face”!!) and growled at me, “No, it’s MY toys!!!!”

It was actually pretty funny (his growl and proclamation of “batman face”), but of course, I didn’t laugh, because it was NOT funny, if you know what I mean.

His defiant behavior continued at times all throughout the weekend………..even at Grandma’s house when we came home.

It was snow-balling.

At home, he didn’t even want ME or KWASI to touch his trains. Odd.

I talked to Miss Marilyn about it, Kwabi’s daycare provider, to give her heads up about the behavior in case it carried into daycare today. There were a couple incidents, but nothing like this weekend.

She did tell me, however, that I was wrong for putting him in timeout for not sharing. She pointed out that at his age, he doesn’t yet know the concept of sharing……..that he feels his toys are his toys, and he knows no different……that taking his toys and giving them to another child without his permission is like taking away his power. She said I should have asked him if he would share, and if she said no, then to try again later, but to keep encouraging him that sharing is nice, etc. etc. And the reason he kept giving me his “batman face” all weekend long was because he was trying “scare” me…..I guess, to get back at me for the power struggle we had this weekend.

I listened intently, aware that I probably could have handled it better. She pointed out, also, that to keep telling him to “share, share, share” then it becomes a negative thing he won’t want to keep hearing. A better option would have been to have Cheyanne and Kwabi swap toys at the same time, even if only for a few seconds….to let the other child “hold” each other’s toys (minimizing the use of the word “share”)….and to ease him into sharing instead of forcing it upon him.

But think about this………how do you feel, as a parent, when your child is not cooperating according to how YOU think he should cooperate?? Do you worry about how the other parent will perceive you? Perceive your child?

Well, I did. The appropriate thing was to share the toys, yet, I didn’t even consider how this made Kwabi feel, or think about WHY he didn’t want to share. I expected him to be able to do it, and I was going to let him know that if he didn’t, he was in trouble (bad of me). I didn’t want to look like the parent of “that” child–the stingy one. I didn’t even consider to say, “Well, Cheyanne, I’m sorry, but Kwabi doesn’t want to share right now. Let’s try it again later.” I did force it upon him because I felt it was the socially acceptable thing to do in that situation.

Anyhow, the conversation with Miss Marilyn was interesting conversation, and made me thinking differently about the situation.

I’m so curious about this topic of “sharing” now that I’m going to do some research on it, to understand more about why kids don’t or can’t easily share, and what really IS the right age to teach and EXPECT a child to share.