Teaching Kids to Share with Friends
Teaching kids to share is a skill that will help them throughout their lives. Sharing also helps kids make friends at school. It is especially important to teach kids at a young age (preschool or beginning of their toddler-years).
As a parent of an only-child (Ryeson) we made it a point to teach our toddler how to share with us and his grandparents/cousins because he wasn’t around a lot of kids when he was younger (because of his Cystic Fibrosis we didn’t send him to daycare right away).
Here are 5 ways we taught our kid to share with friends:
We talked a lot about sharing with each other (my husband and I) in front of him and practiced sharing with each other and him every day.
When he threw a tantrum when he “didn’t want to share” we corrected his behavior and talked to him about why he felt that way about sharing. We would acknowledge that he was upset, take a few deep breaths with him and come up with a plan for him to share.
We didn’t automatically MAKE him share. We talked it through with him and compromised so that he could play with a toy for an extra 2 minutes and then he had to share. Usually, that worked out well.
We tried to make lots of play-dates with friends at both their houses and ours so he could practice his sharing skills with his own toys and friends’ toys so he could see how important it is for his friends to share their toys as well.
We bought a few books on sharing. Rye especially liked “Llama lama Time to Share” and “I Can Share” Board books.
Remember that every kid is different - so the sharing strategies we used when Ryeson was a toddler may need to be amended for your own child. Also, each kid has special attachments to specific toys, and there may be some toys that the will never want to share. And that is okay.
Talking through “big feelings” when they are upset about sharing, modeling how you share, and pointing out good behavior when you see other kids sharing are all great strategies for any toddler parent.