Current Events > It's kind of weird that sharing is emphasized with kids so much

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like having to share your property with siblings or something and not really having a defined sense of your own property. Imagine how batshit crazy adults would go if this were actually expected of them. Like imagine you just bought a new car and drove it to work a few times, and then one of your coworkers kept complaining to your boss that it's not fair that you get to drive a nice car and they are stuck with some crappy beater, and so your boss decides to force you to "share" it with them and so they get to drive your car home this weekend and you are stuck with their beater.

It would be amusing to see the reactions of adults.
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I get what your saying but this is usually meant for sharing toys at a day care or something. At least that's what it was in my experience. Like sharing the playground equipment and shit
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TC trying to get deep. But kids DO need to understand with communal objects, that it's basic social skills to share or wait your turn.
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glitteringfairy posted...

I get what your saying but this is usually meant for sharing toys at a day care or something. At least that's what it was in my experience. Like sharing the playground equipment and shit

In that case I agree, but in my household this applied to things like gameboys.
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As the others have said, these are two different concepts you're combining into one.

In schools, sharing is emphasized because the students are using public property found in the classroom, like crayons and books. You will rarely see a teacher force a student to share something they brought from home, because it is theirs and it is their decision if they want to share it.

At home, sharing is emphasized because your siblings are roommates. Boundaries are more hazy even with personal property when you live with someone else. And yes, adults who are roommates do have to learn how to share. One of my areas as a college administrator is managing housing at our college. The number one judicial issues I deal with are due to roommates not knowing how to share, whether it is sharing the food in the fridge, sharing cleaning responsibilities, or even sharing friends (not kidding, this happens a lot). Learning to live with someone else means learning how to share, but also learning how to set boundaries.

And no sharing lesson is ever complete without the appropriate boundaries lesson. Any teacher teaching a student to share should also be teaching the student when something is rightfully theirs to use. Just because they are told to share their crayons with their neighbor doesn't mean the neighbor can just take the crayons whenever he or she wants to. Sharing is the process of working out a lack of resources in a mutually beneficial manner.

Adults should be able to handle that on their own without a third party getting involved (and when we do, that's when we have courts).
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Zanzenburger posted...

At home, sharing is emphasized because your siblings are roommates. Boundaries are more hazy even with personal property when you live with someone else. And yes, adults who are roommates do have to learn how to share. One of my areas as a college administrator is managing housing at our college. The number one judicial issues I deal with are due to roommates not knowing how to share, whether it is sharing the food in the fridge, sharing cleaning responsibilities, or even sharing friends (not kidding, this happens a lot). Learning to live with someone else means learning how to share, but also learning how to set boundaries.

Hmm I didn't think of the roommates aspect of things. I think it's more the idea of not having any sense of your own property or having any say in what your boundaries are with any of your possessions. As an adult, you surely can have things that you aren't forced to share with a roommate at any random moment.
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Kids are expected to share because they don't own anything.
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One of my areas as a college administrator

Your resume must be longer than the Bible.
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DevsBro posted...

Kids are expected to share because they don't own anything.

Then why bother with the pretense of birthday and Christmas gifts in the first place?
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Then why bother with the pretense of birthday and Christmas gifts in the first place?

For pretend. Kids love to pretend.
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Sativa_Rose posted...

Hmm I didn't think of the roommates aspect of things. I think it's more the idea of not having any sense of your own property or having any say in what your boundaries are with any of your possessions. As an adult, you surely can have things that you aren't forced to share with a roommate at any random moment.

I think the main reason for this is this:

DevsBro posted...

Kids are expected to share because they don't own anything.

Technically, the parents own anything they give their kids. It's the parents choice, then, to tell the child how to use the item. It's only "theirs" in the informal sense as a way to raise them and get them to learn concepts. Kinda like allowance. The child is not really making the money for doing the chores because the parents already earned the money. The money only belongs to the child because the parents said so as part of a learning experience to teach them the value of hard work.

Once a child learns the aforementioned lesson on sharing, there is little reason for a parent to get involved.
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I get your point, and if executed properly it makes sense, but the kids need to be informed of things and it should be consistent, etc.

Zanzenburger posted...

The child is not really making the money for doing the chores because the parents already earned the money.

The main thing I want to say is that I don't agree with this statement from an economic standpoint. The child is exchanging their labor for money, the same as the parent does with their employer. Unless you're basically just saying that the child has no real possessions and therefore there is no real change of ownership going on, I think the child actually is "earning" the money from an economic standpoint.
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Sativa_Rose posted...

The main thing I want to say is that I don't agree with this statement from an economic standpoint. The child is exchanging their labor for money, the same as the parent does with their employer. Unless you're basically just saying that the child has no real possessions and therefore there is no real change of ownership going on, I think the child actually is "earning" the money from an economic standpoint.

I guess my only argument here is that this is entirely family-driven from a household perspective, not a societal one. I never got paid for doing chores. It was just an expectation as part of a growing child that I was responsible for the maintaining of the house as someone who lived in it. There is no societal pressure that a child must be paid for chores just as an adult must be paid for doing work (in which there are laws that require this).

A child that gets paid for chores is done so because their parents believe it is a valuable learning lesson to pay them to do something they're supposed to be doing anyways. I see the allowance money as a benefit earned by the child, but parents can always stop the allowance transaction and not be in the wrong because it was their money anyways and the child is expected to do their chores, money or not. It's not like they have the right to just say "I will not make my bed" because their parents choose not to pay them anymore due to financial difficulties or whatever.
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Even kids when they buy things with "their own money" from allowances or something usually aren't expected to share those anymore unless they're generous people.
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Being selfish is human nature. People are not born generous; it has to be taught and learned. It's survival.