Tell Your Kids, Stop Sharing! Is This Mom Wrong?
When you're growing up, you learn from your parents that sharing is caring. Especially being an only child, it was instilled in me to share my toys and not be spoiled but this Mom disagrees.
One day, Alanya Kolberg of Springfield, Missouri was on the playground with her son Carson. According to her post, reported by the Daily Mail, as soon as they walked into the park he was bombarded by 6 kids all demanding he share his new Transformer toy, Minecraft character, and truck. He held the toys to his chest and didn't want to share them. Kolberg saw her son overwhelmed and told him that he could say no to sharing if he wanted to.
Her explanation is that parents are supposed to teach their children how to be adults and when as an adult do you share something to complete strangers just because they asked to, because you're "supposed to?" So he only shared his toys with a friend's daughter who they scheduled to meet there. Using the example of a sandwich, she says, "If I, an adult, walked into the park eating a sandwich, am I required to share my sandwich with strangers in the park? No!"
The mother makes some sense. If a random person, granted they're not literally starving, comes up and just asks for my sandwich, I'm not necessarily just going to give it to them. That's not really sharing. Kolberg was attacked with both positive and negative responses. Is she right? Should we be teaching our children to not share with strangers? Does sharing hurt the stranger danger argument?