To not make my son share?

YABVU, if you want independent play don’t go to a shared play session. And if your kid has had them for AN HOUR yes they should share.

Your child already sounds like they might be on the possessive side so better teach them that yes they are allowed a good time to play themselves but after that they share.

Otherwise you and your son are going to have a really hard time at nursery, school, uni, relationships, parenthood…. Basically life!

Wow, entitled much? Oh course you make him share! They are not his toys!

Your child might be happier if you bring your own toys, or get your own pool where he does not have to interact with other children. He obviously does not understand how to do it and you are not teaching him how.

Fucking hell is this real? if I encountered you and your child at a group like this I would have very pointedly said something similar like “oh well you’ve had those toys a long time now and it’s important we all share and take our turn”.

Nah this cant be real. You'd of been the first to kick off I bet if you'd arrived after all the toys were taken and your son had none.

Sorry but all the toys there are shared for everyone. Your son had two buckets a watering can and a few other toys for 45 mins to himself. You should have encouraged him to share and play together with the boy really or at least made a feeble tempt to try so you didn't look like a lazy parent.

Bloody hell OP, you need to revisit the meaning of the word sharing! Your child held onto those toys for best part of an hour! Why did you gather said toys and bugger off to the other end of the pool? You said your kid “ prefers to play independently” I say, you did this so that he wouldn’t have to share his abundance of toys with the other children? You are not exactly helping him develop those sharing skills, are you? You will have to do better OP because once he starts reception, he won’t be able to hog all the toys with 20 or more children. Neither will a “ no Thankyou, I’m playing “ response work in reception! 🙄

If everyone grabs toys and removes them for ages to play’independently’ as you did with your son, there will soon be no toys for newcomers to play with at all. If he’s so independent , he is in his own area, hogging toys for the entire time, then maybe he should take his own. Or he stays in an area with other children who can take the toy he’s not playing with at that moment and play with it for a while. Then they can swap about. It’s social skills.

Hoping this is a reverse… obviously in a shared toys environment you teach your child to take ONE or TWO toys and then take them back and swap them so another child can have a play (unless there are lots of the same one). You absolutely do not take half a dozen, hoard them at the end of the pool and expect no-one to tell you what shitty and selfish behaviour that is. In this case, OP, YOU need to learn to share too.

Everyone was unreasonable here. That's too many toys to take for a shared session. Also I don't understand your rule about sharing....if they finish their turn first (and he'd already had them an hour?) then that's not sharing. That's keeping a toy as long as you want, someone else playing with it when you're finished does not count as sharing?

But the other family also sound very passive aggressive, and even if I thought another child had too many toys and should share I wouldn't be saying that in front of the children. I think you need to model thinking about others to your child - if we take two of these plus this and this and this, what does that leave for everyone else?

Probably because he had so many toys and because he’d been playing with them for so long. Just because you’re first doesn’t mean you get to hog everything and don’t have to share at all.

You sound like that kind of parent!

We arrived at the start of the session and he chose 2 buckets, a watering can, a few small toys and a float, then we went to the opposite end of the pool away from everyone else because he prefers independent play.

Why did my child have to be targeted after the first time he said no?
Because he had several toys and you were hogging them.
Why take your child there to play independently?

Why no one else’s? Because other children hadn't hogged a pile of toys.

Why are you reluctant to teach your child to socialise? He'll grow up to be spoilt and selfish if you aren't careful.

That is hugely unreasonable. How would you feel if your child arrived 10 minutes later and all the toys had gone? You approach the other children asking for a turn and they all say no.

Shared toys are very different to toys at home. If i was you I'd have told my child you can have it for 2 more minutes and then it's some one else's turn.

'We absolutely teach our children to share, but our rule is that if they're still actively playing with something, they can finish their turn first. Once they're done, sharing is expected. I also feel that if another parent had an issue, they should speak to me rather than taking something from my child.'

It doesn't sound like you've taught him to share, there was no sharing described in your original post. If he plays with it the entire session is that his turn? When does the other child's turn start?

I can't believe that 10% of the voters actually believe the OP behaved reasonably! They must be 'lurking' and not commenting for fear of getting ripped to shreds 😆

OP has grandly flounced, leaving the room holding the hand of PFB, complaining about how very very unfair we’ve all been.

DH tells stories of the tensions over food when he and teenage friends would go out for things like pizza. You’d think it would be easy enough to work out what was a fair share of pizza but inevitably a few would have a different idea of what this was.
It’s not uncommon for boys of this age to behave this way.

sounds like you are treachingyour child to be very entitled and greedy, why did you let him have so many? They are obviously there for every one not just you. What about when you are in a park and he is on a swing, his allowed to just stay on it as long as he likes whilst others wait for a turn?

I know, it's effing infuriating! 😆

So, you put a plate of 25 items on table and say "there you go, there's enough for 5 each". Great.
But then pp saying "wow how dare you dictate and control what people eat"

Eh? Wtf is wrong with the world. Anyone opens their mouth for anything whatsoever and they're being controlling and dictating and abusive? It's like someone removed the capacity to actually think!

If your son went to a party tea and there was a set amount of food to share for all the children, then one kid grabbed most of the food including two whole pizzas and sat at the far end of the table slowly eating it all, whilst your son and the other kids at the other end of the table had hardly any food left to share between them, including no pizza because one child had taken it all………. Would you be ok with that? Would you wait for an hour until he was ready to “share” whatever food he couldn’t eat at the end, his scraps? Or would you go over to said greedy child and his mother and ask if he could please share the food with all the other children because he wasn’t behaving fairly or kindly and the other children were also hungry?

And this is how entitlement is handed on one generation to another.

Oh come on, we've all been to those sessions and there are definitely not enough toys out for 8 per child or however many you let your son take!

You were totally unreasonable and it sounds like you both need to learn to share!

It seems that your parents forgot to teach you how to share, op.

I thought this was going to be about not sharing his own toys not failing to share public toys after you allowed him to take far too many.

As a mother of boys, when I bring the food to the table I always announce how much each person can have!

would be far better to announce

think about how you are going to share so no body is left with an empty plate

this turns it into a learning experience rather than being told what to do and not actually thinking about sharing

It's really not. Especially by the time they're teensgers.