I’m not comfortable telling my kids they don’t have to share. Here’s why
As a child, I remember gawking at a classmate’s Crayola collection during art class. I had perfectly serviceable Pentel crayons, but having previously seen the glossy, bright Crayola boxes only in American TV shows, I yearned to try them. I also thought my Colleen twin-head colour pencils were cool until I saw a 60-piece Faber-Castell colour pencil set for the first time. “Can I borrow your colour pencil?” was usually met with a generous “yes” – albeit sometimes with certain conditions, such as time limits of a few minutes for each use, or having to close my eyes while using the borrowed item. (The indisputable logic of eight-year-olds.) Looking back, we were learning to set our own boundaries among ourselves. We shared our resources with each other, but with our own rules, limitations and options. The difference was that those rules were set by us. When a parent steps in and speaks for a child who is assumed to be too young to voice their own “terms” of sharing, the dynamic inevitably changes. Often, I’ve …
