Sharing is Caring?

As a parent who goes to the playground with my child, I hear this often. Sharing is caring. The top-down moral beating that we as parents feel obligated to give our child - so that "they turnout okay eventually".

Here's the situation:

Your child is not sharing her toy:

Her own toy, which she owns, which she brought down to the play-area, with a thought of playing with it.

And we tell her, you are not being caring towards others by not handing it out straight away (That's what we want her to do, innit?)

Let's reflect on this act of sharing. When do we share?

Do we share when we feel deprived of something, or when we feel abundance? 

Suppose we took our favourite food to lunch at work - it got to 3pm for your team to sit down to finally have lunch - your barking mad hungry. Will you share, willingly? Wouldn't you much rather - gulp it all in one go, yourself!?

When we force our children to share, we push them into a state of deprivation. The opposite of what is needed for sharing. Compounded by the fact that children up to a certain age are ego-centric by nature. (Probably age 12, but it starts falling away by age 6 since they want to be a part of a community. Till 6, they are every man for himself - as order by nature.) . This is needed for survival and it's encoded by nature.

Nurturing a feeling of abundance in our children and sharing of resources (which this earth needs so badly) will come as a natural outcome of feeling abundant. This can simply be done by allowing children to choose for themselves when they are ready to share and helping them realise the same when another child is not sharing some of her toys.

Children left to their devices will figure it out within themselves anyway, it's when we adults fall in their transactions, is when it gets complicated.

And let's face it: If saying "Sharing is caring" worked, you wouldn't have to do it every day, during play-time, for many years, innit? 

So next time, try this: When your child is not sharing something on a playground - hit pause: Sit back and observe. You may be in for a few surprises :)

The author is the father of a 3 year old, an Elementary Montessori trained guide by AMI and is currently pursuing a Diploma in Transactional Analysis for Counselling. 

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