002: Why doesn’t my toddler share?

Transcript

Imagine this: you’re with your toddler son or daughter at a playground on a Saturday afternoon so there are a lot of people around.  You’re sitting on a bench while your child plays in the sandpit where several others are playing as well.  You’re half paying attention while you catch up with some texts on your phone.  You hear a scream and when you look up you see a child you don’t know clutching tightly onto the spade your child had been playing with, and your child is about to burst into tears.

Or this: You’re at the playground on a Saturday afternoon and your child is in the sand pit, but when you hear the scream you look up to see your child holding the spade, and a child you don’t know has clearly just had it removed from his possession.

What do you do?

I find a host of conflicting emotions circle in me in these moments.

I want my daughter – who has just turned two – to understand the value of sharing and to proactively engage in sharing behavior.  I want other kids to engage in this behavior with her as well.  More than that, even, I don’t want my child to be perceived (mostly by the other child’s parent) as an aggressor.  Yet I’ve read that children are mentally incapable of understanding sharing until rather later than age two.  So what do I do?  Do I jump in, remove the spade from my child’s hands and give it back to the boy?  Do I sit on my bench and let them sort it out for themselves, risking the other parent stepping in and perhaps socially shaming my daughter or even me?

Some cultures take what I would call ‘drastic steps’ to promote sharing behavior.  The Papel people in Guinea-Bissau give something desirable, like a snack, to infants and then tell the infant to pass on the snack to a sibling.  The Ngoni people of southeast-central Africa force small children to “donate” prized resources to peers, and tell proverbs lauding generosity and condemning meanness – both direct and indirect ‘encouragement.’  Such training inculcates the importance of sharing behavior in young children and helps the children seem more attractive to substitute caretakers, lessening the burden on the mother.

One can only imagine what’s going through the minds of these youngsters as they’re forced to “donate” their prized possessions.  A key goal for western parents is often to encourage spontaneous sharing behavior, and preferably even altruism – the idea that someone takes an action to benefit another, which has no benefit for himself.  Anthropologists have noticed that a key socialization goal for western parents is to ensure that their children are liked by others, and adults see sharing behavior as a key indicator of a child who will be liked (although preferably I couldn’t find any studies showing that children prefer other children who share…).  I’m going to set aside the topic of altruism and helping behavior for now because there is a lot of research on that and I’d like to save it for a future episode.  For now I’ll focus on the concept of sharing behavior.

Anyone who has been around more than one toddler knows that sharing is a fraught subject.  Even children who will willingly help to clean up a mess or cooperate in getting ready to leave the house (considered other examples of pro-social behavior) are less likely to engage in sharing behavior, as sharing typically involves giving up something of value to someone else.  I’ve read an anecdote (and can’t remember the source now!) of a toddler who said “share” as he forcibly removed a toy from another child’s hands – because he had learned over time through adults removing toys from his own hands and saying ‘share’ that ‘to share’ means ‘to give up the thing you want.’  Younger children are especially reluctant to share; a recent experiment with one and two year-olds found that the children were much less likely to give up their blanket or a special toy brought from home to help a hapless adult than they were to help under identical circumstances without the sacrifice.  Very young children – aged 10-12 months have been studied brining toys to parents in apparent acts of sharing or offering food to parents, but the young children may not be acting in a truly prosocial way in the sense of behavior that is intended to benefit another.  They may instead be seeking a positive reaction or approval from an adult, or perhaps it’s a part of how the two play together, or maybe even a way to keep a toy away from a sibling.  Some babies, after they start this ‘sharing’ behavior, will later hold out something as if it is to be shared and then withdraw it.  It’s all part of their experimentation on social interactions to see what will happen when they do this.

The concept of ownership is important in sharing.  When do children know that something belongs to them rather than to everybody or nobody?  One study found that children as young as 18 months resisted peers’ attempts to take their toys.  When the original possessor tried to regain the toy from the taker, the taker protested just as much as when somebody who had never played with the toy tried to take it – implying that the children were reacting to the loss of something desirable rather than because they understand prior possession or ownership.  By around age two, children are usually able to articulate something about ownership – they can identify to whom items belong, and two year-olds will protest their own toys being taken away more than neutral toys.  Two year-olds will protest if their own belongings are taken but don’t recognize the injustice of someone else’s belongings being taken (possibly because empathy is also a late-developing skill).  One study found that 24 month olds shared toys and food significantly earlier in a series of cues than younger children – often within the first five seconds, upon the playmate’s sigh or forlorn look – four times more often as 18 month-olds.  24 month olds shared without even being asked about ¾ of the time, with 18 month-olds sharing about ¼ of the time.  18 month-olds sometimes shared without being asked by a playmate but rarely spontaneously, although they often shared if the playmate specifically requested it.  24 mont-olds shared spontaneously more often than not and did so more quickly; often immediately that they recognized their playmate had no toys.  The toddlers thus recognize when they and a partner have unequal resources and will share when the costs are minimal (i.e. there are other toys to play with).  The experimentors theorize that younger toddlers may not understand when other toddlers want to share toys.  The toddlers in the experiement were playing with an adult experimentor who could clearly articulate his/her desire for toys, and where this articulation occurred the 18 month-old were more willing to share.  If a toddler is unwilling or unable to vocalize his desire for a toy then how can another be expected to share it?  By 24 months responsiveness to non-verbal requests becomes more highly developed, but that requires the child playing with the toy to disengage from his own play to consider what the other child wants.

So to share what’s yours, you first have to understand it to be yours.  My two year-old does now understand that my sunglasses are mine (and that I don’t want her to play with them).  I think she understands that her few special toys belong to her, and while I’ve heard her say “your shoes” (she still mixes her pronouns) when she’s putting them on I’ve never heard her say it in a possessive way over a treasured belonging.

Another key concept is related to time.  Parents of toddlers know that toddlers live in the present – they only care about what’s happening right now.  So if someone else is playing with their toy *right now,* as far as they’re concerned it’s gone for good.  As their understanding of time develops and they can tell an absent parent what they did at the park today, and can think (with some encouragement) about what they will do after a nap, they can see another child holding their toy and imagine a time when they might get it back.

Children also need to see themselves as individuals, with thoughts and feelings separate from those of others, before they can empathize and thus truly share.  This is something to keep in mind when your child goes through the sometimes interminable “me/mine/I can do it myself!” stage – this development is necessary for them to understand that “me” is different from “you” and “you” have feelings too!

Finally, they need some form of impulse control: the ability to wait and not just grab what they want.

Until children have these skills, it really isn’t possible for them to truly share.  Have a quick think right now.  Can you remember a time when your child has exhibited each of these skills?  If not, that’s totally normal!  And it explains why your child isn’t really ready to share.

As parents, we can model some of the actions related to sharing, like turn-taking.  Carys often wants some of whatever I’m eating so when I make myself a snack of yogurt and berries I put more in the bowl than I need so we can share.  While she usually starts out by saying “Want some!  Want some!,” after a couple of times where I take a spoonful and then offer her a spoonful she gets into a rhythm of taking turns.  At other times she will offer me a grape out of her own bowl and say “sharing.”

While taking turns is an important action related to sharing, it isn’t truly sharing until the child empahises with me that I want a grape and then offers it to me.  Carys has recognized sadness in herself and others for a while; interestingly she told me “baby sad” when she heard a baby crying several weeks before she described it in herself (“Carys sad”).  She will sometimes randomly say to me “pretty happy!”, meaning “I’m pretty happy!” and just recently we were reading the book Penguin in which a boy named Ben receives a penguin as a gift, the Penguin just sits in stoic silence as Ben tries to entertain and then provoke it, and eventually Ben jumps up and down, gets red in the face, and yells “Say something!”.  Several times Carys has pointed to Ben and said “nap nap” (meaning he is sleeping) because he’s screaming with his eyes closed, but last time we read it we talked about how people can have their eyes closed for reasons other than that they’re sleeping and that Ben jumping up and down and having red cheeks meant he was probably really frustrated.  She returned to that page in the book several more times the same night, pointed to Ben, and said “frustrated.”  I’ll be interested to see how she generalizes it to other people and empathises with them in the coming weeks and months.

Another thing parents can do is to keep a few special toys to be truly the child’s own and not for sharing, especially with visitors in the child’s own home.  This can help him to become more willing to share the toys he’s less attached to.  If this fails, try meeting with friends in neutral places like a park or a beach where there is lots of everything (sticks, rocks, sand, seaweed…) and nobody owns any of it.

We might be tempted to reward sharing behavior by praising “good job” or something similar, but parents who value intrinsic motivation as a quality in children might consider avoiding this.  Alfie Kohn, a former teacher turned theorist on parenting issues has a great book on this topic that I’ll delve into much more deeply in a later episode; for now I’ll just point out a couple of studies he mentions.  One study found that “Children who come to believe that their prosocial behavior reflects values or dispositions in themselves have internal structures that can generate behavior across settings and without external pressures.  By contrast, children who view their prosocial conduct as compliance with external authority (for example, because a parent has told them to share, or shamed them for not sharing, or praised them for sharing) will act prosocially only when they believe external pressures are present.  Another found that school children whose mothers relied on tangible rewards like stickers or toys were less likely than other children to care and sharea t home, and were less likely to be helpful in a laboratory experiment.  Finally, another study found that four year olds who were frequently praised for prosocial acts were less likely over time to engage in them than children who didn’t receive verbal reinforcement.  The reward is about controlling behavior, and nobody – not even children – like to be controlled.

We can also consider shaming a child into sharing, as some of the cultures we mentioned at the beginning of this episode do – in some cultures this is perfectly acceptable.  Something along the lines of “Be a good girl and share the truck with Johnny.”  What the girl hears is “I’m not a good girl.  You can’t have that thing you really want; I’m going to make you give it to Johnny.”  Resources for Infant Educarers, the respect-based parenting philosophy to which I subscribe, has a way to approach this: to introduce the idea of considering the emotions of others without shaming the child who wants to hold onto the toy: “Maria, you’re playing with the truck.  Nate would like to play as well.  When you’re done with the truck, please let us know because Nate is waiting.”  Maria might continue to play with the truck for some minutes but quite often she will voluntarily offer the truck to Nate sooner than you might expect, because there was no pressure on her to share and she was able to do it while saving face.  Nate can also be encouraged to develop his impulse control: “I know you want to play with the truck.  Maria has it right now.  It can be hard to wait.  When Maria has finished, you can have the truck.”

So when is all this likely to change?  As long as children play alongside each other, like two year-olds do, they don’t have much motivation to share.  As they approach three and are more interested in playing *with* each other, they suddenly have motivation to make – and keep – friends who also want to play with a given set of toys.  As the capacity for empathy develops the children shift from sharing for their own benefit (so other children will continue to play with them) and toward sharing for more altruistic reasons.  One study showed that three year-old children share most equally with a peer after they have worked together to obtain rewards in a task requiring their collaboration, even when one child could have monopolized the reward.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that a lot of the pressure we feel as parents around sharing comes not from the other child with whom we want our child to share, but from that child’s parents.  We’ve all felt the evil eye from parents who think our child might be trampling on their child’s needs.  One way we might consider approaching this is to quickly ask other parents right as a situation begins to escalate: “Are you ok with letting them work this out by themselves?”  People from some cultures might be fine with this and will let the children work it out even if they hit each other (which will likely get the message across quite effectively!).  Others will let the children try to sort it out but will block any attempt to hit.  Some find “sportscasting” helpful – saying (without analyzing) what is happening.  “Maria had the toy and now Nate has it.  Maria is crying” (without layering in “Nate took the toy and now Maria is sad”).  This allows the children to begin to consider each other’s feelings without the pressure of the adults’ interpretation.

If you need more help with toddler sharing, I can highly recommend the booklet “The Secret of Toddler Sharing: Why sharing is hard and how to make it easier.”  It’s 36 pages of strategies specifically on guiding toddlers toward sharing.  Don’t worry about remembering the title – just look for it along with the other references for this on my website at yourparentingmojo.com; just go to Episode 2, Why doesn’t my toddler share anything?

Thanks for listening: next time we’ll be talking about encouraging early literacy skills in children who aren’t reading yet.