Sharing is one of those early life lessons and we parents seem to put a lot of value on our children learning to share. We worry that if we are raising an only child, he or she won’t learn the lessons of sharing and when an older sibling welcomes a new baby—we immediately start to worry about whether or not she will be able to share toys, time, attention, and love. In reality, however, how much sharing should be expected and when it comes to siblings, should they really be expected to share everything and anything?
As many of you know, my children are all rather close in age, barely over a year between each of the three births. This has meant that my kids have generally been in the same “stages and phases” for their entire childhood. Until adolescence, they were often able to wear each other’s clothes and two of my teens still play on the same co-educational soccer team. There just seems to be some natural, built-in sharing expectations in family life. With that reality, I’ve found that we needed to work hard at creating space and privacy and giving my kids permission to NOT have to share all the time.
I do think sharing is important and a practical reality—it makes kids better able to cope in school, work in small groups, and definitely can make family life more peaceful—but I think that siblings need some boundaries with each other too. I think that sharing should evolve to be a chosen activity—not something that is forced and mandated as this only builds resentment and can make sibling rivalry worse.
Even when my girls were young and wore a lot of the same clothes interchangeably, there were just some things that belonged to one or the other. Everyone likes to have some things that belong just to him or her and are not community property. Even in large families where children tend to hand down clothes, toys, shoes, and coats—I think that it is important for children to have at least a few items that are unique to them and that they don’t HAVE to share. I found when my children weren’t being expected or forced to share, they were much more likely to do it naturally of their own accord.
Also: Inviting Siblings to Share in the New Baby
Does Birth Order Affect Personality?