002: Why doesn’t my toddler share?

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? Assuming you want your children to learn how to share things, what’s the best way to encourage that behavior?  What signs can you look for to understand whether they’re developmentally ready?  Does praising a child who proactively shares something encourage her to do it again – or make her less likely to share in the future?  We’ll answer all these questions and more.   Jump to highlights 00:37 Introduction of episode 02:10 Drastic steps to promote sharing behavior 02:54 The key goal for resting parents 03:28 Concepts for sharing behavior 04:55 Concept of ownership 07:07 Understand the thing for you to be yours 07:29 Understanding of time 08:20 Impulse control 11:42 Shaming a child into sharing 14:55 Five sharing strategies you can teach children   References for this episode Brownell, C., S. Iesue, S. Nichols, and M. Svetlova (2012). Mine or Yours? Development of Sharing in Toddlers in Relation to Ownership Understanding. Child Development 84:3 906-920.  Full article available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578097/ Crary, E. (2013). The secret of toddler sharing: Why sharing is hard and how to make it easier. Parenting Press, Seattle, WA. Davis, L., and J. Keyser (1997).  Becoming the parent you want to be. Broadway Books, New York, NY. Klein, T (2014). How toddlers thrive. Touchstone, New  York, NY. Kohn (1993). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, As, praise, and other bribes. Houghton Mifflin, New York, NY. Lancy, D. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England. Warenken, F., K. Lohse, A. Melis, and M. Tomasello (2011). Young Children Share the Spoils After Collaboration. Psychological Science 22:2 267-273.  Abstract available at: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/2/267.abstract   Read Full Transcript Transcript Have you ever thought about how common the murder of children has been in societies we now call “Western” in the past, as well as societies all over the world today? I recently read a book called The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings by David F. Lancy, and it’s a tour de force that describes attitudes to children across cultures today and in history.  Lancy describes how children in a variety of societies, from the Olmec to the Aztecs and the Greco-Romans, children were sacrificed to the Gods to bring rain, and to function as intermediaries between the divine and the human worlds.  In other cultures the infant is viewed as threatening in its own right or as a vessel or avatar for ghosts and evil spirits.  In Micronesia women might give birth to ghosts; deformed children who were thrown into the sea, burned or buried.  Cannibalism survives in the Korowai, New Guinea,...