AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER
Ask Alok da

My niece who is 12 yrs old doesn’t like sharing😥. If she takes her favorite food to school and her friends ask her to share, she doesn’t give or gives a very small piece. If by chance she happens to share a chocolate with girls she doesn’t like, she wants to snatch it away. She is attached to Krishna, and only thing that pacifies her is when we tell her that Krishna likes if she shares what He has given her. She says “I know it’s bad, i know it’s a devil that says this, but I can’t overpower it. It tells me that those girls did bad and said bad things about you, instead of that you shared your things, now you go steal something from them. Or I keep thinking what will I get if I give them”..[conti]

I think this must be possibly because she is a single child, and she doesn’t have many cousins at her age(unlike us when we grew up) and we don’t have guests or relatives coming home so she hasn’t seen us sharing things with families, so developed this tendency. Because of this she has a very hard time making friends. I have told her that you have to give things and not always keep getting if you want friends, or told her stories of my childhood, she understands but couldn’t put into practice. How to make her overcome this difficulty Alok da?

Single child may not be the reason. Rather it is quite unlikely. Children often pick up number of behaviours that they unconsciously notice in significant elders around them. They are best taught by example rather than words. For example at home, everyone should eat together after praying and offering the meals. She should see the family members serving each other. Then a good base is laid for getting rid of the tendency. 

Affectionately,

Alok Da

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