To not make my son share?

There is a lot of evidence that forcing children to share before they've finished playing actually produces children who resource guard and are less likely to share voluntarily. What @drearyllama descibes is the Montessori principle that everything is communal except whilst it's in use, and whilst it's in use nobody else takes the toy/equipment/materials.

On the other hand this was a communal shared play situation, so the question really is whether there were enough toys to go around. If there weren't then leaving one child with nothing is very poor social skills, and a typically developing three year old can understand that if it's explained.

Its completely irrelevant that the other child was older (and completely possible you misjudged their age - people always mistook two of my children for twins even though they are two years apart because one was tall and broad and the other small and slight - parents made passive aggressive comments about how my three year old was "too old" to be in the under 6s area with his five year old brother and two little sisters (and he was playing with his siblings and not doing anything he shouldn't have been).

😱...Bucketgate

Nah, not great

I never forced my kids to share at all time, they are allowed a go

but that seems to be an awful amount for one child, how many toys were left for the others?

If I had been the other mother, I would have come and shared half the ones you were hogging 😂

I’m going to agree with the majority; unless there were plenty of spare toys it was incredibly unreasonable to allow your child to hog so many for so long.

Impossible to say without knowing:

Were other buckets and watering cans available?
Were any other toys available?
Was your son actively playing with all three things at the same time? I can’t really imagine a game that needs two buckets and a watering can all at once.

Because your child had more than his fair shares worth!

You don't get to take shared toys for the duration of a session! What if him 'actively using' something meant no-one else had anything, does that sound fair? What if it happened to him?

My daughter would hoard toys when she was little too.
As much as she didn’t like it she needed to learn that the toys are there for all the children and to not take more than you need.

Sharing and turn taking is a skill we want to develop in young children. You need to be mindful of that.

That's the one post you engage with?

Were there plenty of toys available for the other children?

This reminds me of a girl when I was at primary school who would never let anyone else in the playhouse when she was in there. She would go in, close the door and then play with everything inside and not let anyone in for the whole of every single break. The teacher had to repeatedly try and remind her that there was such a thing as sharing - in the end she was banned from playing in there at all, as she would never, ever share. I guess I know what her swim sessions probably looked like now...

You’re not doing your dc any favours here. He is going to struggle when he starts school and isn’t used to sharing. It’s a really basic skill and you will be letting him down if you don’t teach him this.

And we wonder why children have issues later in life!

How many buckets. Watering cans and toys were there?

in a shared session with shared toys if you hog the only available items for over an hour then you aren’t teaching your child to share.

You are teaching your child they can have what they want, at whatever quantity - regardless of everyone being there for the same reasons.

How would you and/or child feel if there was no toys available and after an hour at the session he still couldn’t access any?

If you want to hog toys, take your own.

How many toys are there overall? If there are hundreds then fair enough but it sounds like he had quite a few. I think he should have shared.

Yes you grabbed more toys than is reasonable and then taught your child to hog them

Yes your child should have shared. One hour of exclusive play with a toy in a shared environment is long enough.

Your son took multiple toys: 2 buckets, a watering can, a few small toys and a float. That's so greedy and deprives others unless there were loads of other things to play with - including a watering can - which I guess not, otherwise the other family wouldn't have asked him to share.

It's not your kid's fault, it's your fault. Why did you let him take so much stuff? He's only got two hands. Entitlement springs to mind. And you hogged them for 45 minutes. My goodness. You are incredibly unreasonable. And selfish.

An hour in the pool?? He must have been shrivelled

From your post, it doesn't sound like you were making him share though, or that you were going to make him share at all

Honestly I think your son had had the toys for long enough that you should have made him share yes.