Sharing and Possessiveness

The following is a selection from the book Raising Children Who Think For Themselves by Dr. Eisa Medhus. From the chapter titled "Specific Child Rearing Challenges - How to Handle Them to Encourage Self-Direction", the following introduction is offered.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." - Oscar Wilde

Here are some inner-directed suggestions that will help with some of the most trying child-rearing difficulties we may stumble upon. All of these approaches are designed to preserve your children's ability to rely on internal dialogue instead of external influences to assess and correct their behavior. Using this section as a ready reference will help you raise a self-directed child, even if it means carrying the book, tattered and tear-stained, to the market, in the car, or at home. There are some challenges that, I hope you will never have to face, but others will be as inevitable as a pimple on prom night.

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To get to self-direction, there are a few universal caveats for every one of the situations that follow. First, our children need to understand and agree with both the need for the furl and the consequence for breaking it. Only when they come to agree with our rules, through their own internal dialogue, will they become self-directed. Second, look to your own parenting strategy as the possible source of some of the problem. Are you over-controlling or over-protective? Either trait can elicit an externally directed response, as your children react to an unhealthy situation. Third, remember for all these parenting challenges how important it is for you as parents, to model the right behavior. If you're expecting your children to act one way and you act another, the double standard will throw a monkey wrench into their whole internal dialogue machinery.

And lastly, don't forget to laugh.

Why they do it

Children have trouble sharing because they're afraid of losing things to someone else's control. Some feel as if their private property is the only thing in their lives over which they have any power.

Logical consequences

Don't force, but strongly encourage your children to share. Any disciplining should be targeted at the conflicts they create when they choose not to share, like bickering, yelling, and hitting.

If your children don't share with their siblings or friends, they'll suffer natural consequences like losing a friendship or having no one to play with.

Solutions toward self-direction

Don't even expect your children under three to share at all. They have no concept of other people's feelings at this age. After that age, teach your children how to respectfully ask another child to share a toy and to take good care of that toy while it's in their possession.

Teach your children about the benefits of sharing. I tell mine that if they don't share a toy, they just have the toy, but if they share the toy, they have both a toy and a friend.

If your children fight with someone else over a possession, don't take sides. Either don't interfere at all, or, if the noise level bothers you, take it away from both of them until they work things out.

Give choices: "Johnny wants to play with one of your trucks. Do you want to let him play with the dump truck or the backhoe?"

Use impartial descriptions: "I see you shared your favorite toy with Timmy. I know how hard that must have been. Look how happy Jimmy is now."