Teaching Toddlers to Share is Overrated...

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Am I the only one who thinks that NTs place WAY too much importance on teaching toddlers/preschoolers to share their toys?

Why is this so important to so many parents? I don't know how many of these parents are ASD, but it seems to be primarily an NT thing, that "We must teach little Johnnie and Sarah to share!" It's like "OH NOOO, they're not sharing!! !"

Despite all this emphasis on teaching preschoolers to share, they nevertheless grow into adults who DO NOT share. For example, an employee announces they have a headache and asks if anyone has an aspirin. Bob in Cubicle 7 has a full bottle of aspirin but stays silent. Adults cut each other off on the road, shove to get ahead of each other in crowds, or despite being wealthy don't make charitable donations. Adults have fits if someone takes their parking spot or if a neighbor's garbage bag is two inches on their property. One time I placed garbage in the neighboring association's dumpster. Next day my garbage was strewn on the cul-de-sac. I bet the person who did this was punished if they didn't share as a child.

I think trying to teach toddlers and preschoolers to share only incites anger, angst and upset in them. What's wrong with having a toy all to oneself? After all, ADULTS cherish the idea of having something all to themselves! Just let little kids play and have their fun instead of forcing them to share, especially with a stranger. Jeez.

Well this is freaky, I was just thinking earlier today about how 2-year olds usually don't understand the concept of sharing, because they thing everything belongs to them and the world revolves around them. Which is usually is usually considered normal, but most parents don't want their kids to be selfish so they try and teach them to share when they get older. Even though it's usually like pulling out teeth. Or there's that one kid that you can't share with because they destroy everything they put their hands on.

But adults never have to share if they don't want to. No adult tells another adult "don't forget to share". That's one good thing about adulthood.

As the father of a 2 year old, I’ve got a bit of insight here.

The whole “sharing” thing is an attempt to solve a very real practical problem with toddlers- how do you stop them from walking up to people and taking their stuff right out of their hands without asking?

There are two ways to go about this:

1.)enforcing ”sharing”

2.)teaching your kid to ask, be patient and wait their turn

NTs push 1 hard because they mistakenly believe that it’s a shortcut to 2. They think that 2 year olds are not developmentally capable of waiting their turn, so they use 1 as a shortcut to the behavior they want to see.

That’s right, “sharing” (as widely taught to toddlers) is 100% performative, designed to make it look like their kid is well behaved without actually doing anything.

That’s why NDs don’t understand it and why OP (and I assume most on here) don’t get it. Because it’s performative, so it doesn’t make logical or intuitive sense.

I see this a lot when I’m with other parents and their kids.

So like most two year olds, my kid has a really bad habit of walking up to others and taking stuff right out of their hands without asking.

When my kid does this, I tell them to give it back and ask. And they do.

The other parents reaction almost universally is 1.)tell their kids it’s okay that their thing got taken right out of their hands and that it’s good to share! And 2.)to tell me to my face that having my kid give back the toy isn’t developmentally appropriate

I ignore the adult, thank my kid for doing the right thing by giving back the toy and asking or apologizing, and we move on to something else.

When the reverse happens (other kid takes my kids toy), the other parents almost never apologize and never corrects their kids behavior.

Frankly, I think that what NT parents are doing with the whole “sharing” dynamic is normalizing bullying from a very young age for nothing more than silly performative reasons.

Taking something away from someone else - or having something taken away from you- is not sharing! Sharing is waiting your turn. Sharing is asking. Sharing is moving on to something else when you can’t play with that thing someone else has right now.

I personally think it is not overrated. I feel it is important to expose this important principle at an early age. Whether they practice this concept when they become adults is entirely up to them.

I didn't teach my kids to share.
I didn't even know it was a thing.

They turned out just fine, full of empathy and giving to others.
I guess they got it intuitively.

If I may disagree a bit regarding charitable donations.

How do you know that these wealthy people aren't giving to charity?

This is kind of the point. A bloke called Jesus once said words to the effect of 'If you give to charity and let everyone know about it, well, that's not charity, is it.'

Philanthropy is grotesque. 'Look at me! I'm rich and I'm helping all these less fortunate people!' I look at the charitable foundation of a certain billionaire, and all the publicity it gets, and in my personal opinion he's given back only a tiny fraction of the enormous amounts he's dishonestly taken from his customers over the years.

I think it has some sort of nuisance over the idea of teaching toddlers how to share...

There's the blindly give away with what you have, there's being subservient, there's the simple give and take, there's the manipulative conditional sharing, there's the trait of being charitable or generous, and then there's the synchronous way of being willfully giving to pave a way on how to navigate socialized cooperation within groups.

On the surface, behaviorally, it looked the same.
But the intent, the motive, the process, and expectations? Not so much.

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Reading the question i believe this is a way to teach children empathy.

Empathy means to be aware of others, their thoughts, body language, needs & motivations & how that ties in to yourself or may effect you.

Adults that show empathy tend to perform better in the workplace, society & relationships and tend to be richer.

The opposite is true

Having empathy doesn't necessarily make you a good person. Donald Trump probably has a high degree of empathy, when he was making real estate deals he needed empathy to understand the other person he was making deals with, their motivations and intent and how he could manipulate that to his advantage to make a profit.

He probably wasn't using those skills to be charitable or nice, neither is really most people which is what confuses people.

A love rat or conman has a high degree of empathy to rip off his victims.

Empathy & being nice are two separate things, although a person can use empathy to be nice.

Two examples :

Negative empathy: A conman pretends to be your friend and sees what your needs, motivations & weeknesses are to manipulate you into buying a scam investment & stealing your money

Positive empathy: (boss) I heard your mother died recently , I'm sorry to hear that if there`s anything i can do to help like if you need a few days off or something.

Just imagine a world where no child is taught to share.

I think kids should be taught to share as preschoolers. At that age, they'd understand the concept of sharing better.

I agree that the concept of sharing that is taught to small children seems like an artificial construct and a form of play-acting at looking superficially nice. I grew up in Italy where teaching children to share is not a thing. You're taught that you should take care of your things because they don't grow on trees. My mother told me that if I let other children play with my toys they would break them, and she was generally right, as the kids who wanted to use my toys wanted to be careless with them because they weren't their toys. But somehow Italians don't grow up to be selfish...