Sharing
When I first started teaching, a question that was frequently asked by parents of 2-, 3-, or 4-year-old children had to do with managing sharing. At first I tried to advise parents to make a direct response that involved words that would be persuasive to children and then that degenerated into little more than exhortation. When I had my own child, I finally realized that the real question was, "What do you do when your children won't share? There is hardly a parent who hasn't clutched in a social situation where a child grabs a toy or refuses to let some other child use a toy or favorite possession. The problem was compounded by the reality that as a teacher, my environment was set up to foster sharing and I saw little of the problem in class.
It is clear that all children must experience ownership, for they own precious little, before they can share. Putting ourselves in the place of children helps us gain some perspective on this problem. Everything in a child's life is up for grabs. No one would argue with the right of parents to provide material for children in the environment. How many of us see this as an absolute right to alter and amend the environment to suit our needs. Certainly, I wouldn't argue for leaving setting up the environment to children but consider the effects of our alteration of their environment. When is a child invested with ownership in his possessions?
Another factor that must be present to encourage sharing is developmental readiness. We usually want our children to develop abilities "now." We especially want them to master certain activities on the spur of the moment, like when we are entertaining friends who have young children, and we want our children to make us proud of them. A child possess a psyche of its own. Sharing and other higher order social graces is a factor that children grow into and are not born possessing.
One way in which children grow in consciousness is by modeling behavior on people they experience in their lives. Parents and other adults are powerful forces for supporting sharing as a good quality. It bespeaks a level of generosity that may have service as its basis or a genuine interest in promoting the common good. But, adult behavior in this area does not always provide the role model we envision for our children. A close examination of our own attitudes in this area may reveal a lack of generosity to lead the child to the desired end. Sharing is a complex behavior that results from many interactions, and for the young child, mostly with adults.
Lastly, of all our faculties, intelligence is the most sensitive to indiscriminate correction. Our direct corrections cause panic in the child's mind and his intelligence shuts down. The intelligence, having closed its doors, leaves the other faculties in chaos, deprived of its direction. This is a sensitivity that can get lost in the shuffle of our own embarrassment. Guiding children is a responsibility that parents must shoulder, and we cannot ignore a lack of generosity on the part of our children. But we want that guidance to take place with success and without causing greater harm. We want corrections to be constructive which often means that they be made "not now" and "not by us"
Sharing and other qualities that appear as children grow in consciousness can be best supported if we think of them as points of arrival, not as a point of departure. We can be most supportive if we recognize the awareness of sharing as part of the complex process of life. Then we grow in harmony with our children sharing a generosity of spirit that will speak volumes to our children about true sharing.
