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Articles: My Experience | To share or not to share?
- Mrs. malathi kona
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Sharing was one of the first values I remember learning as a child. It was just not acceptable for me to be possessive about my toys and not let other kids play with them. I remember there was even this rule for my birthday party – I was allowed to participate in the party games but if I won, I would not be allowed to keep the prize and it would go the kid who came in second. My mother’s logic was pretty simple – since it was my birthday and I was already getting a lot of gifts, it was only fair that I didn’t get the prizes as well. I used to really hate it – after all, what’s the point of winning if you’re not going to get rewarded for it??
Now that I am older and wiser and also a mother myself, it makes a lot more sense and it is clearer to me what my mom was trying to inculcate in me. I hope I can teach my kids the value of sharing as well. So, in the park, when kids come and ask me if they can play with hima’s toys, especially the ones he is not playing with, I always let them have them. Right now, hima is too young to be possessive or protest about his mother’s generosity with his toys but I hope he is getting the subliminal message that it is okay for other people to enjoy her toys as well.
I have always felt good about doing this too and the sweet smiles and polite thank-you make it well worth it. But it has not been all smooth sailing and there have been recent incidents that really irritated the hell out of me:
One day, a bunch of kids asked me if they could play with hima’s ball and sand toys. Since hima has lost interest in them and wanted to run around the park, I readily agreed and told them I would be back to get the toys and if they needed to leave before I got back to the sand pit, they should just leave the toys there anyway. I came back 10 minutes later and guess what – no kids and no toys!
I have been wondering… Those kids were too young to have come to the park themselves so their parents must have been somewhere around and they must have left with them. Does that mean that the parents thought nothing of it when their kids appeared with someone else’s toys and actually condoned the act of taking those toys home with them? And even if I were to give those kids the benefit of doubt and assume that they didn’t take the toys, it still means that someone else (a kid or even worse, an adult) stole hima’s toys while they were lying unattended in the sandpit. Who does that and what have their parents been teaching them??!
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