Sharing for Your 6-Year-Old

Now Is the Right Time!

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play a vital role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship, and helping your six-year-old develop their sharing, turn-taking, and healthy friendship skills is a perfect opportunity.

Children ages five to ten are in the process of learning about themselves, their strengths and limitations, why they feel the way they do, and how they relate to others. This is also known as their self-awareness. ¹ They better understand themselves through interactions with you, their teachers, and their peers. Learning to share “stuff” in social play allows your child to naturally practice cooperation, negotiation, inclusion, communication, flexibility, conflict management, and diversity appreciation. Children utilize toys, art supplies, games, household objects, and more to exercise their social, emotional, and cognitive skills.

Yet, there are challenges. Sensitivity over ownership and sharing is expected in your child’s development. Turn-taking and sharing can be a challenge. When your eight-year-old rips a ball away from a neighborhood friend, yelling, “That’s mine!” it can cause upset in their relationship. Connecting with and caring about others and their property is essential to your child’s development. Learning how you can support their growing friendships and their taking responsibility for the care of their possessions can help you feel more competent in your role as a parent. The steps below include specific, practical strategies to prepare you to help your child through the ups and downs of growing healthy friendships, learning to collaborate, taking turns, and sharing.

Why Sharing?

Whether it’s your five-year-old breaking down because their friend won’t share their Lego set or your ten-year-old obsessing over the presents they want for their birthday, your child’s relationship with “stuff” can become a daily challenge. As your child grows, the idea of sharing transitions from physical items to sharing power in the relationship and learning how to give and take. For example, this may look like who leads and who follows in play or how your child resolves disagreements on what to do with friends. Your child’s emerging ability to engage with peers and become part of a social community is essential to their development.

Today, in the short term, sharing can create

• opportunities for your child to build relationships with others
• a growing sense of care for others
• a sense of confidence that your child can manage a certain level of difficulty
• a strong connection between you as you navigate these challenges together

Tomorrow, in the long term, your child

• develops empathy
• helps them see others’ perspectives
• shifts their focus away from self to contributing to the well-being of their community
• builds self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships, and responsible decision-making skills

Five Steps for Sharing

This five-step process helps you and your child through the ups and downs of growing healthy friendship skills like turn-taking and sharing. It also builds essential skills in your child. The same process can also be used to address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).

You can get your child thinking about sharing by asking open-ended questions. You’ll help prompt your child’s thinking. You’ll also better understand their thoughts, feelings, and challenges related to friendships so that you can address them. In gaining input, your child

• has the opportunity to become more aware of how they are thinking and feeling and understand when the cause of their upset is sharing related
• can begin to formulate what it means to care for and keep the property
• can think through and problem-solve any challenges they may encounter ahead of time

Actions

• Engage your child in a conversation about sharing and turn-taking. You might ask, “How can you take turns with your toys?”
• Practice actively listening to your child’s thoughts, feelings, and worries about sharing. Paraphrasing what you heard your child say can ensure you fully understand what your child is communicating. Paraphrasing is repeating to the person a summary of what they’ve said to check how accurate your listening is and confirm to the speaker that you have heard them. It may seem awkward at first. But this is an essential way for you to check your understanding while simultaneously teaching children how to listen for comprehension. A conversation might go something like this:
  • Child: “I shared my art supplies with Amanda, and she messed them up.”
  • Paraphrase: “So I hear you did share your art supplies with Amanda, but you didn’t like what she did with them.”
  • If you hear a subtext of feeling, as in this example, you can also reflect the feeling implied. Reflect on the feeling: “I understand you were upset and disappointed that Amanda made a mess of your materials. Is that right?”
• Engage your child in a conversation about friendship.
  • “What does a good friend look like?” 
  • “What do you think it means to be a good friend?”
  • “What would you like others to do to contact you?” (Do they want to be included in games or fun activities?) Then, ask your child, “How can you adopt those qualities and actions? How can you be the one to include others?”
  • What can you do when you and your friend want to do different activities?
  • When disputes over stuff arise, “How can you act as a good friend without giving away things that might have significant value and importance to you?”
• Grab a large sheet of paper or poster board. Ask your child, “Who’s your favorite hero, book character, or movie character?” Have them draw the hero on the poster board. Now, list the many characteristics a hero might possess to be a good friend. “Are they kind? Do they help others? Do they accept others for who they are? What stuff is important for them to have, and what stuff is important for them to share?”
• Sometimes, feeling the need for friends, especially when they feel like they don’t have many, can make a child feel alone, vulnerable, and different. Yet, “stuff” can get in the way and create arguments. Reassure your child that it’s typical to disagree with friends over things but that people will always be more important than possessions.

Social connections are vital to your child’s learning and development. Learning about developmental milestones can help you better understand the role of friendships in your child’s life and the challenges they may face.²

• Five-year-olds have grand and vivid imaginations and can construct elaborate play themes. Because they are working hard to understand school rules, rules and routines are necessary to help them feel successful (and not chaotic). Those rules and routines facilitate play with peers. Some will “tattle” on peers when they do not get their way or see another break a rule. Rest assured that this is how they internalize understanding the rules by attempting to enforce them with others. They may have difficulty turn-taking and get into conflicts over toys. With limited attention spans, conflicts also tend not to last long.
• Six-year-olds can be ambitious and thrive on encouragement. They can be highly competitive with peers. This tendency can lead them to dishonesty, bossiness, and becoming critical of others. They attempt to internalize their social rules, and criticism of others helps them define their boundaries. They may still have a blanket or stuffed animal as their comfort object. Kindness, connection, and inclusion are essential to emphasize at this age.
• Seven-year-olds need consistency and may worry more when chaotic schedules and routines change. They tend to be moody and require reassurance from adults. They can become extremely loyal to one friend or claim a “best friend.” Because friends will change (and perhaps rapidly), building friendship skills and mainly staying kind to others amidst changes will help your child. They are also becoming more capable of caring for their toys and possessions, so at this age, they can increasingly organize, clean, and care for their stuff.
• Eight-year-olds’ interest and investment in friendships and peer approval elevate and become as important as the teacher’s approval. They are more skilled at cooperation and may form larger friendship groups. They are more resilient when they make mistakes. They have a greater social awareness of local and world issues and may be concerned about the news or events outside your community. They are highly social and full of creative ideas. They may introduce new toys or games they want because they see all their friends at school have those items.
• Nine-year-olds can be highly competitive and critical of themselves and others. They may worry about who is in the “in” and “out” crowds and where they fit in friendship groups. They may tend to exclude others to feel included in a group. It’s an excellent time to encourage inclusion and kindness toward a diverse range of others. As they become more aware of their peers’ evaluation of them, they may become more concerned with their appearance and interests and change those or hide them to gain their peers’ approval. Clothing and accessories may become more critical at this age.
• Ten-year-olds have an increased social awareness to try to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others. There is much more of a give-and-take in friendships with listening, talking, and compromising. With their rising social awareness also comes a newfound worry about what peers think of them (for example, “He’s staring at me. I think he doesn’t like me.”). They tend to be able to work through conflicts and resolve fairness issues with friends more rapidly. They may be challenged by wanting to play with friends who are mostly on and only entertained by screens or are narrowing their play interests to one area.

Teaching is different than just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your child for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see, promoting skills, and preventing problems.

Actions

• Model turn-taking. Children can learn to take turns and simultaneously learn valuable social and emotional skills like impulse control, delaying gratification, genuine altruism (giving something to another because it’s a good thing to do), and trust. In turn-taking, your child decides when they are finished with an object and passes it on to another who desires it.
• Turn-taking requires teaching and practicing. So, at a family dinner, call it out when you are taking turns with the butter, ketchup, or salt. Talk aloud about what you are doing, and this will serve as a model for your child. Point to yourself and say, “It’s my turn to use the ketchup.” Point to another and say, “It’s your turn.”
• Proactively teach turn-taking by initiating family games in which your child can participate.
• Children need to learn and practice how to own a plaything, care for it, and collaborate with others, so they need to own it individually. In other words, much can be shared in households with numerous siblings. But, ensure that each child owns one plaything that is theirs alone. More is not better, and sometimes, more playthings – if there are fewer – make it easier to learn skills because of the clutter. Offering moderation in their ownership of playthings allows them to practice valuable skills.
• Developmentally, your child has to understand ownership before they understand and can actively share. Young children can take turns, but sharing when adults enforce it does not work. Directing a child to share or even taking away a toy in the moment of play and giving it to another sends the message that the child with the toy has no rights, is not trusted, and has no actual ownership. That child might feel punished, but I’m not sure why. This can break down trust between parent and child. This tool offers constructive alternatives.
• Organize together. For your child to respect their possessions and the items that make up your household, they must be involved in their care, organization, and keeping. Abilities to contribute and take responsibility for household items differ according to age.
• Teach your child to collaborate using collaborative games. Collaboration requires several social and emotional skills, including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and, at times, responsible decision-making. It can promote inclusion and strengthen trusting connections among participants.
• As your child cultivates friendships, plays, and takes turns with toys, they’ll surely encounter conflicts. Offer practice with some problem-solving tools so that when arguments occur, you don’t have to play referee. Your child will have skills. Here are some problem-solving tools to try:
  • Teach collaborative problem-solving with the traffic light model. First, play as a game to teach and offer practice in each step. Stop at the red light. Breathe and calm down. At the yellow light, think about the problem and identify your feelings. Then, talk about ideas for solving the problem together. It’s a green light when you agree on an idea to try. Go! Try out your solution.
  • When your child is uncomfortable disagreeing or arguing with another, it can be difficult for them to know how to respond in ways that won’t harm themselves or others. That’s why teaching and practicing “I-messages” can help. This statement works effectively from partner to partner, parent to child, and child to child. Here’s an example: I feel _______(insert feeling word) when you ________ (name the words or actions that upset you) because___________.
• Follow up when your child makes mistakes to help them repair harm. A critical step in teaching your child about friendships is learning how to repair physical or emotional harm when they’ve caused it. Mistakes are a crucial aspect of social learning. Everyone has moments when they hurt another. But, it’s that next step that they take that matters in healing emotional wounds and repairing the friendship. Your child will need support and practice to repair their relationships.
• Grow empathy. In addition to developing these essential skills that lead your child to share, there are beliefs and attitudes you can promote to help them as well. For example, when your child uses definitive language like, “It’s mine,” you may respond with:
• • “Sometimes it can feel tough to share, but then it feels good that someone else got to enjoy the toy too.”
• “Do you remember the last time when sharing seemed hard? You took a deep breath and were able to do it.”
• “I wonder if we can do something to make sharing easier.”
• Help your child notice and name their own cues to develop self-awareness and learn to trust their feelings. This includes describing and naming the pride they may feel when they have gotten through a challenging situation. Pointing out their resilience will help them notice it and know it is there when the next challenge arises.

Practice can be pretend play, cooperative work together, or trying out a new skill with you as a coach and ready support. Practice is necessary for children to internalize new skills. It also grows vital new brain connections that strengthen each time your child works hard to perform the new action.

Actions

• Use “Show me…” statements with a positive tone and body language to express excitement and curiosity. When a child learns a new ability, they are eager to show it off! Give them that chance. Say, “Show me how you can take turns with your sister while playing.” Set a goal for playtime and then reflect on how it went afterward.
• Practice turn-taking! Creating opportunities to practice and reinforce new skills is essential when actively attempting to teach turn-taking. Set a goal for how many different practice sessions you want to schedule for one week and stick to it. Here are various fun and simple games that can easily be played at home and could involve turn-taking.
  • Ball play – Kick or roll the ball back and forth.
  • Hide and seek – Take turns hiding and seeking each round.
  • Bake – Make something yummy and take turns measuring and pouring ingredients.
  • Hopscotch – Take turns hopping down the numbers.
  • Bike obstacle course—Create an easy obstacle course for their bikes in your driveway. Use cones, sticks, or stuffed animals that they must ride around. Maybe they must pick up a stuffed animal on the other side of a series of rocks. This can be easy and fun!
  • Music making – Put on some music and get out one instrument. Allow the children to take turns banging the drum or humming on the kazoo to the music.
  • Board games – Take turns rolling the dice, advancing your piece, or turning over cards to make matches in board games.
• Schedule playdates. Playdates can become an invaluable practice for your child. Playdates build connections and help your child practice the skills you’ve taught them. Follow your child’s lead when figuring out who to invite over and when. What does your child talk about at home? That’s a perfect place to begin.
• Proactively remind. A playdate might offer the perfect opportunity to remind your child just before their friend arrives of one skill or tool they might try out. You may whisper in your child’s ear, “Remember how we take turns. How can you do that with your friend?”

At this point, you’ve taught your child some new strategies for taking turns and sharing so they understand how to take action. You’ve practiced together. You can offer support when needed by reteaching, monitoring, and coaching. Parents and those in a parenting role naturally provide support as they see their child fumble with a situation in which they need help. This is no different.

Actions

• Ask key questions like: “Did you have fun during your playdate? What made it fun?” Learn more about your child’s impressions of interacting with others and how working together can make playtime more enjoyable.
• Recognize effort. Frequently, children receive feedback on what they are not doing right, but how often do you recognize when they are working on their behaviors? Recognize effort by saying “I notice….” like, “I noticed how you used an I-message with your sister when you got frustrated that she was not sharing. That’s excellent!”
• Learn about development. Each new age presents different social challenges. Being informed about what developmental milestones your child is working toward will help you be more compassionate and patient.
• Reflect on outcomes to grow confidence. “Remember when you and Sam were not getting along? Sam wanted to control the iPad, and you did, too. But, now you both have discovered that playing dress up with costumes and making up stories without screens is more fun, and you’ve remained good friends.” 
• Stay engaged. Working together on ideas for trying out new and different collaborative friendship-building strategies can offer additional support and motivation for your child when challenging issues arise.
• Engage in further practice. Create more opportunities to practice sharing when all is calm and it’s playtime.

No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.

If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.

There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.

Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You shared your games with your friend — I love seeing that!”  Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment such as a smile, high five, or hug.

Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job.  A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect, like “If you share that cookie with your sister, you will get a treat after dinner.” (If you XX, then I’ll XX.) It stops any negotiations in the heat of the moment.  A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.

Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.

Actions

• Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything moves smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice. For example, when children complete their homework on time, a short, specific callout is all that’s needed: “I noticed you shared your toy! Excellent.”
• Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the whole bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
• Build celebrations into your routine. For example, after you’ve completed your bedtime routine, snuggle and read before bed. Or, in the morning, once you’re ready for school, take a few minutes to listen to music together.

Closing

Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.