Do They Share?

At the kids’ final Early Intervention Session (yeah - knock on wood), one of the questions Beth, the kids' therapist, asked was if they “shared.” They don’t. At all.

Henry will sort of "share" when he rolls a ball to me, but only with the expectation that I will roll the ball back to him. I don’t think Henry would roll me a ball if he thought I was just going to take the ball and leave. Nor should he.

I wasn't aware that sharing was a developmental milestone or something that we should be encouraging. I read the baby books, but I just missed that part. I think we may have even been discouraging sharing buy buying three of everything, like these soccer balls.


If it is a milestone, I really haven’t hit it myself. I don’t share my stuff. As a non-sharer, I don't know how I can encourage this behavior in my children. I have my stuff, other people have theirs, and never the twain shall meet.

I question whether sharing is even a good thing. If a child shares, the child has less of whatever resource is being shared. I can see the purpose of sharing in a hunter gatherer society where one person kills a bird and someone else has some berries, so they make a meal out of it. But we have Publix. We don't need to share now. We can just get our own stuff.

I know that while it is odd but semi-tolerated for me to blurt out "I'm not sharing" after a waiter at PF Chang's tells the table about how the restaurant encourages trying each other's plates, that same behavior may not go over well in a kindergarten class. I also know that am not in a position to be overly critical when I get a note from a teacher that says Henry doesn't share well with others.