Teach Children to Share and Avoid the “Playground Villain” Label

In ten (more or less) easy steps

Adelina Vasile
12 min readOct 6, 2022
Photo by Steven Libralon on Unsplash

Are you frustrated that your toddler won’t share anything with other children?

It happens mostly because they’re not developmentally ready to do so, yet.

We could talk for ages about what causes a child not to share. Whether it’s normal for three or four-year-olds not to share. Or at what age should a child be able to share?

The short answer?

Sharing requires empathy, which develops over time — over the years.

Meanwhile, you can ease the process and equip your child with skills that’ll facilitate the transition, by doing the following.

Be a Model

Children learn from what they see, not what they hear.

You can’t teach them to stop hitting by hitting them. And you can’t tell them not to eat chocolate when your mouth is full of it (I tried.)

Want to teach them to share? First, do it yourself. Second, talk to them about it.

When you talk the talk and walk the walk, the lesson is powerful.

So, begin at home, casually:

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Adelina Vasile

Mother, educator, journalist, copywriter. I write about the things I need to learn myself.