I'm just reading an interesting German discussion on the English obsession with forcing children to share - apparently this is wrong, wrong, wrong and even to blame for ...

[emkana]

... the recession, as forcing young children to share encourages excessive greed in adulthood.

but seriously, the German consensus is that children should not be forced to share, that they have a right to defend their things and that it's not that children must learn to share, but that children must learn to accept ownership, so as not to demand things that others have. With the argument being that adults are not expected to share their things either, so why should children?

I can kind of see where they are coming from, but for everyday life I would find it very difficult. If ds has a visitor who wants to play with eg his digger, and ds won't let him, and visiting child cries, then I feel I have to enforce that ds shares, because I feel sorry for visiting child and because I want ds to learn empathy. But German viewpoint is that at ds's age you can't expect empathy so shouldn't aim to teach it. So what do you all think?

I do go down the 'it's nice to play together' road rather than 'you have to share'. If he doesn't WANT to share it's usually better to find another solution!

(and DS1 is now playing on his own and saying 'no, it's MY car' to his invisible companion so I may have failed on there )

Pinktulips, good for your 'ma'!. In Gran Canaria in about 1993, an Irish group did the same thing - removed towels and then innocently said to the 'churmans' we didn't want to dirty your towels when we lay down on the sunbeds! We'd spill our drinks on your lovely towels - which you forgot..

by the time we left there was a mini revolution in playa del ingles and the brits were standing up for their sunbed rights. Was very funny at the time. Probably soured the holiday for the germans a bit!

is it possible to have a discussion about anything relating to Germany without references to WW2 and sunbeds?

this is about parenting, non? It does smack a leetle of casual stereotypes: I don't see every discussion touching on Ireland fizzing with references to drink and the BVM...

bloss rabeneltern means bad parenting - I think that this may be German humour!

I had thought it was just a tired old stereotype but it wasn't.

Different countries have different norms. What shocks us seems reasonable to them.

And although this thread is about parenting, actually it's a good way to make adults think (with fresh eyes) what sharing something you feel entitled to have or you're not prepared to share feels like.

Culturally, the Irish are very close to the British anyway. cups of tea, reading papers, talking about weather, approach to raising children, work/leisure balance, obsession with owning own home... consumption of alcohol per head, food tastes, all the big stuff

There are usually bigger differences between the different European countries. I enjoy talking about them. They are interesting and they are funny. I've joined in on a few threads laughing (not in a nasty way) about how the Irish panic if there's not a potato served up in some form with every meal, and it's a stereotype, but it's kinda true, so it's funny, so, em relax!! imo.

what's BVM?

My husband's family is Scotsquite posh Scots so it's not as if they've ever gone short of foodbut there's still a panic among the older members if there are no potatoes for dinner. I've even known them be boiled up to accompany pasta. A meal's not a meal without tatties.

Effie, don't you think in a discussion about sharing wrt Germans the sunbed thing is relevant?

Abraid, that's my mum! she'll do a spagbol or a risotta and still make a few potatoes just in case!! It seems crazy to me now, but only because I had a little hardwire re-programming after many years in England.

the thread is about sharing and whether that leads to greed in adulthood. The hogging of sunbeds is an example of greed in adulthood. Therefore entirely relevant to this thread. So what's your problem, Effie?

I quite agree that forcing children to share their toys that are their personal possessions is very wrong indeed. Share board games, by all means, but not dolls or soft toys.

"Golly, I'd expect an adult to share with me"

yes but would you, really, expect them to share all their special things (to a child his toys are very special and important to him)
i wouldn't be happy with a friend who wanted to borrow my husband, sleep in my bed, borrow my rings, take away and thumb through my first editions with sticky fingers
this is how a child feels when a friend comes and starts bashing around their favourite digger or whatever
we are all ok with sharing - within reason
and so are children, IMO and IME

TBH, its a bit of both. I do think young children need to be taught social responsibility,respect for other peoples possessions, fairness, right from wrong, and a sense of community. I believe that sharing toys is the first step on that route. We do have favourite toys which my kids are not required to share, but everything else is fair game for anyone.
I wouldnt say that I force kids to share, but if they refuse to share, then I make sure that the only toys they have are their own. Then when they want to play with someone elses toys, I explain that if they wont share their toys, then they arent allowed to share other toys either. Then I ask if they want to share their toys too, and they always agree quite happily.

I agree, too, that children grow into wanting to share their games with other children in order to make friends.

Making toddlers share is just loopy.

Without wanting to jump on the stereotype bandwagon, IME Brits tend to be far more averse than Germans to anything that smacks of standing up for oneself in too overt a way. And I think that has its up and down sides, just like anything else.

The sharing thing does sometimes seem to be taken to extremes, though. If you're constantly impressing on a child that it must "share nicely" with its guests, but also expecting it to defer to its host when it's visiting someone else (which are both understandable expectations to a degree), I can imagine the child eventually starting to wonder "When is my mum/dad finally going to stick up for me?"

Isn't it also partly about not wanting to look bad in front of the other parent? Do we behave differently when we're on our own with the children?

Has anyone else read that book "Watching the English" by Kate Fox? It's a really good, very funny and often cringey read. Includes such sections as "Bumping Experiments and the Reflex-Apology Rule"

I have to say I'm in the camp of suggesting that the host shares with a view that they have constant access to their toys at all other times whilst their guest only has the opportunity of playing with them during the visit.
Apportioning an equal amount of time to using the disputed object also seems to work although I have been known to resort to the "if you can't agree over it, then nobody's having it" and removing the item altogether.
Snatching, however is not tolerated, nor the attention-seeking behaviour that arises when the guest/host only wants the object because the other has it.
I can't see that it's wrong to encourage sharing at an early age, the child is not relinquishing an item forever, just showing an act of courtesy and generosity to their guest for the duration of the stay.
I can't really suss out why "enforced sharing" can cause problems, in my expereince, it's the kids that refuse to share (because they haven't been taught) that tend to find themsleves playing alone.
Aren't we just trying to encourage basic social skills which, frankly, seem to be on the decline in this latest "Me" generation?

I agree that English parents are generally not very good at teaching children when they need to stand up for themselves and defend their own interests. English parents tend to tell their children to ignore or rise above others' bad behaviour. This can be a useful tactic, but is not universally appropriate. We all need to learn to fight our own corner in life.

My DS1 who is 3.5 and goes to nursery still struggles Big Time with the sharing thing..I think the reason we are so focused on making our kids share is the image they portray socially when doing so. When we have kids over at our house and my son screams and has tantrums because he does not want anybody to so much as lay a finger on his stuff i get all embarassed and feel like i am to blame( although i am fully aware that the me me me thing is natural and instinctive etc etc)..everybody wants their kids to appear behaved and socially adept but yeah i feel inclined to think: let the sharing happen on its own maybe when the kid finds it is crucial to his or her survival and not imposed upon them by US adults. It is a tricky one..

I think that learning through trial and error that cooperation and collaboration with others is a long-term winning strategy is a much more valuable lesson than having "sharing" imposed by authority from above. But then, I definitely do not believe in communism!

As an adult I don't go round to someones house to play, but to have a cup of tea, chat etc. I take my children round to play with their children, which under 3 usually means to play with their toys, otherwise what would they do?

I do agree that it annoys me that everything has to be shared, even if another child is playing with it, or it is a special toy.

But i want my children to learn that it is kind to share (and I think this is true of being an adult too -I love sharing stuff with my friends), and think that learning to take turns is a good lesson to learn.

we don't do sharing properly yet (DS 3.5) but he learnt "taking turns" some time ago.

Happy to say my 3yo dd (though she did obv go through a lovely MINE phase) genuinely loves sharing because she sees how happy it makes others. Think the BIGGEST issue is modelling, get so fed up seeing adults snatch spades (that their kids aren't even playing with) away from toddlers at the sandpit. FFS why can't they borrow it for a bit? It's a spade that cost a pound anyway

And of course, it's common courtesy really, so have tried to teach asking nicely, and saying thank you (so 'Ooh, can I have a sniff?' as an adult, rather than just grabbing your favourite perfume). IMO kids are happy to share if they are asked nicely and can see how happy it makes their friends. Maybe if there was something that was really, really special but I can't think of anything dd has that she couldn't let her friend borrow and look at for a bit. Really.

It's such a passionate topic for me. Dd has friends who do share (mainly who have been 'forced' to share) and friends who are ridiculously (annoyingly) possessive. But after witnessing said parent telling children in soft play 'No, you can't have these blocks they're ours', I can see why... why not 'why don't we all play together?'

Bah, it's all a symptom of our consumerist society isn't it?

But it's a halfway house isn't it Franny. If you've removed the precious toys, the non-shareable ones, which I've agreed should be done, and which I did do ie. your husband and your bed and your first editions.

Then after that, the child should be expected to start learning how to co-operate and to share. Ime there are some children which throw massive strops about a spade my dc might have found in a flower bed - that they've not looked at for a year. It isn't that they care about the objects in particular, it's just their STUFF they care about without it even being precious. Often too they care v. much about trying to control the situation with these other random children in their house.

Is unedifying behaviour imo - and not just to an adult's eyes, I think other children find it a challenge, because it's basically unkind. And at any age, I see no harm in expecting them to understand that they can't control their environment or other people in this way.

'Abraid, that's my mum! she'll do a spagbol or a risotta and still make a few potatoes just in case!!'

We have just started to notice results with my FIL. It's taken about 20 years...