We received Drake’s first report card from preschool recently. We were quite pleased and surprised at it — check plus in cleaning up — is this real? Drake did very well overall and we are so happy that he is enjoying school so much. Mr. Chocolate and I were looking at the report card and reading the comments, saying is this right? Can this really be our child’s report card? And then we saw the negative in the sharing category and we both laughed; this was definitely our child’s report card.

A negative, according the the chart, means “does not demonstrate this skill at all at this time.” With that in mind we have started to try to work on this since clearly sharing is an important skill set for Drake’s age, and as Juliet gets older it’s important for him to learn how to play nicely with her as well.  I have been trying to work with Drake on bettering his sharing skills through a myriad of ways including books, modeling for him, and using Juliet as an example of sharing.

Since Drake loves books we figured this would be a great way to reach him.

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Some of the tittles we have tried are: Llama  Llama Time to Share, How Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends, Little Lion Shares

I read the stories to Drake and try to point out the sharing behavior in the books.  Sometimes when he is having a difficult time sharing, I remind him about the stories we read — remember when Llama Llama played with his new friend and they shared their dolls?

I also try to model sharing with him through his interactions with me, as well as my interactions with others like Mr. Chocolate or Juliet. Oftentimes when I am eating something Drake finds interesting, he will come over and say, “Can I have some?”  I say, “Yes I will share some with you” and make it a point that this is sharing — letting others have something of yours they want.

The same goes for when he is playing with Juliet.  Since Christmas time I have told him that certain toys were Juliet’s since Santa or our family gave them to her.  Juliet is still too young to really know about toys so I don’t mind when Drake plays with her things, but I want him to know that not all of the toys are his and that his sister is being nice to let him play with her things. When Drake snatches and takes things from Juliet, I always ask him to share with her. If he wants to play with something, he has to ask her for it and also give her something else she can play with.  When Juliet picks up something that is Drake’s and he tries to snatch it away from her, I also remind him to share and try to give her something else to play with. He usually gives her one of her toys he is less interested in, but he is getting the idea of making sure she always has something to play with too. Drake also gets very keen on eating the foods Juliet has on her tray, so I always remind him she is sharing with him and that he can’t have it all. He is slowly getting better at always leaving her something when he comes over to investigate her stuff.

All in all I know that sharing is a hard concept for kids Drake’s age to grasp, and I try to understand that it might take him a while to fully develop this behavior. Juliet is probably the best tool for him; as he learns how to play better with her, it will allow him to take those concepts and apply them with others as well.

Since we received the report card, his teacher has said he made some great strides with sharing more nicely with his classmates, so I do hope we can continue to work on this. Hopefully on our next report card we will at least see a check in that sharing box.