Sharing is one of those things that everyone tries to instill in their kids. We all encourage it - "That's good sharing!" or "Let's share our toys with your friend." We all have the toddler story books on sharing that we read over and over again. There's lots of kids tv shows where "sharing" is the hidden message. If you don't teach your kid to share, then you're basically a failure as a parent.
Teaching siblings to share is pretty tough. It's one thing to encourage your children to share with a visiting playmate who will leave in a few hours. It's another thing when that playmate lives with you, will take your toys without your permission, will sometimes break your toys or eat their cookie and your portion too, and has yet to say "please" or "thank you".
We encourage our kids to share, and sometimes we avoid the arguments by getting each kid their own thing - we have doubles of all the McDonald Happy Meal toys. As they get older, however, Devlin and Ceilidh are becoming playmates who play together (as opposed to playing near each other) and share their toys without prompting. When Ceilidh gets a cookie for dessert, she always asks for an extra cookie for Devlin too.
But what happens if there's only one of something special?
One day, Uncle Billy had one orange sucker and one red sucker. He asked Devlin and Ceilidh what colours they wanted. Devlin asked for red, and Ceilidh happily took the other. Whew - argument avoided. They happily licked their candy, and then Bill heard "switch" from one of the kids. He looked over to see the two trade suckers. They continued sucking now each other's candy, and a few moments later, there was another "switch". This switching of suckers continued for awhile. Bill thought this cooperation and sharing was quite touching as he observed the candy getting smaller and smaller between trades.
And then, Devlin said "switch" and held out his candy. Ceilidh grabbed hold of the proffered candy and crunched her sucker before handing back the empty stick!
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