Sharing

Not liking to share is not a universal feature of autistics. Some can be very generous. Me for instance, I am the most spontaneously generous person in my family, and half of them are not autistic. Having said that, I do not like some of my possessions to be touched without my supervision. Though I am happy to let anyone with an interest handle them, as long as I can ensure that they are treated with respect. I was an only child, as far as I can see having siblings tends towards higher levels of selfishness than the opposite.  

I can also be very generous at times but sharing a book between myself & another student during a course I’m at last week sent me into flight mode as the person was sitting so close to me. I left and went to the bathroom for 15 minutes. I couldn’t focus on anything other than the stranger in my personal space and how on earth can two people share 1 book. I felt forced into that situation because we had to share a book.

Looking back and writing it now it seems incredibly dramatic but that’s how I felt at that time. This is not why I wrote the post above though. 

I was over thinking how I handled a situation the happened today involving my child and this situation made me think back to something that happened week at an ASN club my child attends. A child had a meltdown due to “not sharing” and immediately his mum took his hand and walked him right out of the club and was very apologetic to all at the club for her child’s behaviour…..I actually thought no wonder he meltdown he was happily playing and another child came up and disrupted his play by taking balls from the ball run he was playing with and now your dragging him out from his club. 

I done something similar today forced my 5 year old to share and it caused him to be distressed and I felt I should have took my own child feelings into consideration as I knew prior to forcing him to share it would have caused him distress. 

I can also be very generous at times but sharing a book between myself & another student during a course I’m at last week sent me into flight mode as the person was sitting so close to me. I left and went to the bathroom for 15 minutes. I couldn’t focus on anything other than the stranger in my personal space and how on earth can two people share 1 book. I felt forced into that situation because we had to share a book.

Looking back and writing it now it seems incredibly dramatic but that’s how I felt at that time. This is not why I wrote the post above though. 

I was over thinking how I handled a situation the happened today involving my child and this situation made me think back to something that happened week at an ASN club my child attends. A child had a meltdown due to “not sharing” and immediately his mum took his hand and walked him right out of the club and was very apologetic to all at the club for her child’s behaviour…..I actually thought no wonder he meltdown he was happily playing and another child came up and disrupted his play by taking balls from the ball run he was playing with and now your dragging him out from his club. 

I done something similar today forced my 5 year old to share and it caused him to be distressed and I felt I should have took my own child feelings into consideration as I knew prior to forcing him to share it would have caused him distress. 

That was my first thought too.

You end up with noting at all to share if you let others take everything off you..

Yes in hindsight and the more I’ve thought about it I do think this too. 

Yes, I’m the same at home, my children have their own toys & if there is something both would like I would buy one for each child.

Yes afterwards it totally affected his play he was on edge and if anyone came near he would say they’re going to steal it, he was upset when people were looking at him which isn’t something he has been Upset about for a long time. We finished our session early as he asked to go home. 

All of the other kids except for my son & 1 other child all are fully verbal and having back & forth conversations. They are interacting with staff and participating in a range of activities in the group. My son does not do this he tends to stick to one thing and has my full support and he doesn’t have conversations but makes use of some language but there has to be a purpose for him to use his language. 

I have such a great relationship with my youngest and play is something we have worked on so hard. He has a lot of trust in me that’s why I’m feeling so guilty. 

It’s difficult when it’s group toys. 

When the boy say go if you can’t share you should go hone the boys mother did say to her son, you struggle with sharing too. 

Which I don’t think was helpful if I’m honest as it’s implying that my child should have shared but is struggling to. 

thank you for your reply Juniper. It’s helpful. 

Lau said:

Another child comes up & takes some blocks off of my child’s creation. My child starts high pitch screaming over & over. Which can be alarming to others. The boy said to him if you can’t share go home.

To me, the other child is the one who can't share- instead of asking to play with the blocks as well, he took them from someone else and ruined something they'd worked hard on. Sharing shouldn't have to mean allowing others to break your things or be rude to you.

We shouldn't force children to share. An act of creation or production is even worse. But there are complexities to this.

If I go to a cafe and order a latte, and it's given to me in a mug which the cafe owns, I'm sharing the mug. But if a stranger randomly took a sip of my latte it would be considered an open act of aggression. I use this Cafe analogy to your sons investment of time and creative production (if time and production are how we acquire money to pay for the drink inside the ceramic mug) with collected resources (shared toys - the shared mug), If you force your son to share in a moment where he is working (time and productive activity), he will feel a conflict and depending on his personality, it will teach him something or reinforce something about social engagement. If forced to be generous when he has not yet earned enough, if his process is cut short before the bloom and fading moment of that creative enterprise, that jarring short-circuiting of a process can feel like an electrical zap. He might learn, like a lab rat never invest too much of him self in a moment, his his trust in being able to allow his imagination to run wild severed. Some withdraw others externalise. 

Now, it's important for him to recognise that collected resources are shared. There's a possibility that if he goes somewhere with a collective pool of toys or money, or a public park, he'll have to fight for his 'fair' share. Do we teach kids to not get too invested? What does this look like in a job. There is no difference between children or adults sharing resources. So, really it's up to us as to what we want to teach our children about society. I had to explain to my son that when at home, he didn't ever have to share and when in a collective, there would possibly be a threat of someone undisciplined with little regard for others who would just take because some parents are just as selfish with their children. He didn't have to like sharing and that's not called sharing if you don't have a say in it, if you're robbed of a momentary emotional investment or robbed of a moment of joy.  Around 8 or 9 he began to notice the parents who would publicly humiliate their children or parents who were greedy and thoughtless toward their own children. He noticed the effect it had on his peers. 

But we are always human whether small or large. An act of aggression is an act of aggression. I know far more parents who, if they saw their child just take something from someone else would demand they give it back and wait their turn, find something else to play with. 

I work in the arts sector and helping adults get back to a place where they feel free to create starts with learning boundaries, identify toxic behaviours and being selfish - in a healthy way. If you can help your kids not have to relearn this, but simply to be able to identify when it's safe to explore and create and when it's potentially hazardous, I think you'll have done them a world of good. 

I still have regrets for the moment this happened with my son and I had the exact same revelation. He was devastated. It was literally over a ball, but it shook up my parenting at that moment. I still apologise to my son on the odd occasion for these little moments I wished I'd had better understanding though he's 26 and laughs at me! 

There is lots of occasions my son does share at this group and in life in general but this particular occasion made me think I made a decision knowing my son would be distressed just so the others didn’t think bad of my child that he wasnt sharing. 

I just don’t understand why there is so much focus on children having to share and if they don’t it’s frowned upon. 

Even I don’t like sharing but still expected my child to just share when last week I was hiding in a toilet over sharing a book. 

Just to make it a bit clearer, My son was playing with a toy bricks, he had built a creation and was using a marble to push through the spaces in the bricks.

Another child comes up & takes some blocks off of my child’s creation. My child starts high pitch screaming over & over. Which can be alarming to others. The boy said to him if you can’t share go home.

My son has no understanding of what the boy is meaning. He just sees this boy destroying what he’s built.

I took some blocks and some of the marbles from my sons creation for the other child and placed them at the other end of the table for the boy to play with. This caused my son to be even more upset. I said you have those ones, the boy has these ones. Eventually he did settle after about 3-4minutes

Please correct me if i am wrong but I feel awful that I didn’t stop the boy and say sorry … is playing with this toy today or was I right in what I did? I feel like I forced my son to share just to try fit in with this narrative that children should all share.