Kids only share when adults are watching. Just don't turn your back on them!
Filed under: Advice and health
Alamy
We all like to think our kids are the kindest, most generous children in the whole wide world – a credit to the genius of our parenting skills.
But wait until your your back is turned - and they turned into selfish little monkeys who would rather chew off their right arms than share their sweets or toys with another child.
That's the conclusion of some new research which revealed that kids as young as five are only generous when they are being watched.
According to the study by Yale University, children make strategic decisions about when to behave generously. And - surprise, surprisie - they are only generous when others are aware of their actions.
The authors said that, just like adults, children behave in ways that enhance their reputation when they are being watched but not in private.
The research, published on Plos One, presented five-year-olds with stickers and gave them the option of sharing one or four stickers with another child the same age.
They found children were more generous when they could see the recipient than when the recipient was hidden from view.
They were also more generous when they had to give stickers in a transparent container rather than an opaque one, meaning the recipient could see what they were receiving.
Lead researcher Kristin Leimgruber said: "Although the frequency with which children acted antisocially is striking, the conditions under which they chose to act generously are even more interesting and suggest that children likely use much more sophisticated pro-social strategies than we previously assumed.
"Much like the patterns of charity we see in adults, donation tendencies in children appear to be driven by the amount of information available to others about their actions - for both adults and children, the more others know about their actions, the more likely they are to act generously."
10 things to make you lose your cool with kids
- A broken window<p> How many times have you told him not to play football by the kitchen window? Does he ever listen?</p>
- You never got the letter about parent's evening<p> What’s the point of giving you a crumpled letter with the date and time of parents’ evening the day after it’s taken place?</p>
- Muddy footprints on the carpet<p> You spent a whole hour yesterday hovering the whole house, and now there’s a trail of brown footprints all the way from the front door to the kitchen….</p>
- Chickenpox<p> Everyone says you can’t get chickenpox twice. But you can, you can. Or else your horribly spotty six-year-old is a medical miracle.</p>
- Your child loses a left shoe<p> How? How is this possible? Will the school let her wear trainers? Or will she just have to hop?</p>
- Ripped school uniform<p> No, it’s not possible to do an invisible mend from the ankle to the thigh - and why was your innocent-looking child scaling a six-foot wall in the first place?</p>
- Missing sports kit<p> Just because you feed the washing machine every single day, it doesn’t logically follow that you know the exact whereabouts of her swimming costume/tracksuit/gym kit.</p>
- A reduction in child tax credits<p> You haven’t put jam in their sandwiches for the past six months. Now you might not even be able to afford the bread…</p>
- Your child needs cash at 8am - and your purse is empty<p> It’s for the school trip that she didn’t tell you about last week - and today is the last day for handing in the money…</p>
- Your child has nits - again<p> You spent all last week with a nit comb and bottles of cheap conditioner, and sent your little darling off to school with shiny hair free of insect life. But other parents haven’t bothered. And now you have to go through the whole thing all over again…</p>
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