Teaching your child to share is a process that will continue throughout their early life. For some children, sharing comes easily without a battle. However, many children will carefully guard their belongings and react dramatically if they are asked to do otherwise. http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-to-teach-your-2-year-old-to-share_63838.bc Sharing is an important lesson that will help your child form interpersonal relationships and social skills. Helping your child develop sharing skills can also improve sibling relationships and create a more peaceful, cohesive household.

Before you begin this task you should brief the entire family on the process so that everyone is consistent in their methods. Remember to include older brothers and sisters in the process as they are models for the younger child's behavior. Also remember that children can act dramatically different when they are tired or under duress. A toddler who is proficient in sharing skills one day may regress the next after any incident that forces them to feel insecure. Toddlers will need to be reminded to use their sharing skills on a regular basis. Teaching your toddler how to share can be an easy or difficult task depending on the resolve of your child not to share their belongings.

Your child looks to you as a role model and a mentor. Raise your child from the beginning in an atmosphere of kindness and sharing. If you act defensibly about your own belongings, then your child can easily pick on your behavior. The following is a list of ways that you can help your toddler develop sharing skills by teaching by example:

• Make point to show your child that you and your partner (or you and a friend) are actively sharing. Invite your partner (or friend) and your child to draw pictures together. Ask the other adult in the room for a specific crayon, and thank them profusely when they hand it to you. Repeat this several times. You can also run this same scenario while playing board games or dolls with your child. Through this, your child should see that sharing produces a positive response.

• Get your older children in on the act by play acting sharing scenarios. Make sure that your toddler sees that the older child is being praised for sharing.
• Keep a few safe items of your own in reach of your child. If your child wants to interact with the items, allow them to after saying, "of course I'll share this with you!"
• Point out examples of sharing on TV and in movies that your child enjoyshttp://www.essortment.com/home/teachchildshar_syqs.htm\ref>

When there are other children in the room, help your child develop sharing skills by doing the following:

• If another child is refusing to share with your toddler, talk to your child about the feelings associated with sharing, and how it makes them feel when someone doesn't share with them. Remind them that some toys may be special to other children and they may not always get to play with the toys that they desire.http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-to-teach-your-2-year-old-to-share_63838.bc\ref>
• If you see your child sharing with another child, remember to praise them and be specific about what action you are proud of.
• If your child becomes frustrated and upset about toy usage, take them aside for a "time-out". Allow them to calm down before returning to play with the other children.
• Closely supervise the children as they play. Praise children that are sharing their toys. If any fights erupt, talk calmly to the children and diffuse the situation by showing the children how they can play cooperatively with the toy.
• Provide many of the same kind of toy, such as a bucket of matchbox cars or barbies. Children then can more easily play cooperatively instead of competitively.<ref>http://gomestic.com/family/tips-for-teaching-your-child-to-share/<ref\>

The following are a list of basic ground rules that you can set with your toddler to assist in the sharing process:

• Remind them that if they have friends over to play that they must share their toys.http://www.indiaparenting.com/raising-children/133_353/teaching-your-child-to-share.html\ref> If they do not share their toys, then they will not be able to have friends over again.
• Remind them that they must be sensitive to the feelings others and respect when another child has a special toy that they do not want to share.
• Before the other children arrive, allow your child to put away toys that they do not want to share. Remind them that whatever they leave out to play with they must share. This way, a child can put away much loved toys that they have a strong emotional bond to.<ref>http://www.more4kids.info/476/teaching-to-share/\ref> Sharing is not instinctual and there are some toys that will be more difficult, if not impossible, for your child to share. Respect this an avoid conflict by removing these toys from the situation.