It’s not always good to share.

On holiday the other week my son made friends in the way that four year olds do. 😛

They followed each other around silently at first, which then progressed into funny noises and a bit of slapstick humour and then finally bonded over transformers and monster trucks. 🚗 

It was all going well and I was really enjoying seeing him enjoying himself and having fun. 😁

Then after a while I noticed things change. One of the transformers is my sons favourite, by his side all the time, and the other little boy kept wanting to have it as his character. ✈️ 

Instinctively I felt the impulse to tell my son to share, that ‘it’s nice to share with your friends’. 

And actually I took a moment to pause. I noticed his slightly slumped shoulders and his head down. And so instead asked him if he wanted the toy back, and if he would like some help in doing so. 😊

It felt like such a small but powerful example of supporting him in recognising a boundary and showing him how to uphold it. ☝️

Because when we don’t know how to do this then we will always suppress our wants in favour of other people’s. 🙄

And as adults this then grows into something much bigger than a transformer. We don’t voice our opinions in a meeting in case it goes against what other people think, we don’t say no to our friends in case they get upset, we’re not totally truthful with our partner in case they get offended, we agree with our parents even when we don’t really agree. The list goes on!! 

On the PODCAST this week I having a fantastic conversation with Sarah Dodsley around all of this. We talk about how we become people pleasers, what it looks like and what we can do about it.