Forced Sharing

 I wrote this in response to a post somewhere about "forcing your child to share" quite a few years ago.   Just gonna repost it here.

As an adult, I would not want anyone forcing me to share my clothes, food, furniture, or electronics. Suppose you are in a waiting room with several others and a worker walked up and told you to share your cell phone with the person in a nearby seat so they could play games? You would probably not like it much and would object. But we tell little kids to do this.

What I did with my kids was let them put things into drawers or shelves or on my bed (before the other child/ren arrived) with the instructions, "Those are put away, they are not for playing today. It would break "my child's name" heart if those things were to get broken or damaged. You have really special toys like that, don't you? Most say yes and even tell me about their special toys and how they don't like it when they have to share that toy. Only one child has ever snuck and gotten down the put-away toys. And yeah, one of them got broken. In general, my kids have enough toys left to share so that the put-away toys are a non-issue. My kid is still sharing ... but on his/her own terms and with a happy heart, not on the verge of tears as they watch their favorite special toy being handled by another.

I think the funniest thing about this is that frequently the toys being put on my bed are not even their most special toys. Just the freedom to decide which toys stay put away is very freeing to them. Frequently, especially if they have played with that child and know them well, the most special toy will be kept so they can play together with it.