Not sure this is a perfect solution but in our house we let the kids pick one or two items that are “always yours”, everything else is considered communal and must be shared. It’s a framework to build on as they get older - some things are shared (toys) somethings are not (underwear, water bottles, Mom’s laptop).

For what it’s worth we still have daily “not sharing” arguments…

Things he is using, you definitely want to encourage the territoriality. Otherwise there is a real risk of bullying when he goes to kindergarten and preschool. But things that he is not currently using should definitely be shared.

I'm guessing that your son is about two years old (based on my three children's behaviour at that age), so he should already be in daily contact with non-family children but not yet experienced bullying. So for that I'll mention how i think about it: bullying is how humans determine who is the Alpha Male. It is natural and expected. So don't try to shield your son from it, rather, prepare him for it.

Alpha/Beta/Sigma/Omega/Upsilon male is discredited pseudo-scientific bullshit, and it is a bad idea to base one's personal philosophy on it. I also disagree that bullying is natural, but if even if it is, that still does not mean it should be accepted, tolerated, or encouraged (which you are implying).

I disagree. While the alpha male terminology seems a bit oversimplified, the fact remains that all sorts of violence, be it physical, verbal, or social (e.g. preventing someone from joining in the play) is a tool people use in varying degrees to influence relationships.

It's a dangerous tool, because it's so stupid. Beating someone is effectively saying "I don't care how well reasoned your arguments are, now you pretend to listen to me instead." But this stupidity is both its weakness and its strength.

Violence is a very complicated tool, and I think people need some exposure to it (on both sides of it) to understand when its appropriate and (more frequently) when it's uncalled for.

This does not mean it's tolerated or encouraged -- quite the opposite! It's important to be the role model that teaches children all the circumstances in which it's wrong!

But pretending it serves no social function makes, I think, you a worse teacher. By completely denying the upsides of violence you become less trustworthy as a teacher, because even children can see the obvious short-term upsides!

It IS natural (unfortunately; not all truths are palatable). And not only that, it's systematic (at least in the States). For example, I am currently "fighting" to get something covered by my health insurance. In the past I have "fought" in court to defend myself from traffic tickets, etc. It's inescapable that you will have to fight for yourself in this life in some form, IMHO. Maybe not physically, necessarily (...home intrusion? attempted robbery? unjust police use of force? Trump getting himself installed as dictator?) but force, willpower, "oomph", it's all connected. Your tone of voice on a phone call or in person? That's an expression of force as well. Fuller comment I wrote on this topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896777

The other night I was speaking to someone I just met and realized I was (without even thinking about it) dominating the conversation, so I consciously pulled back out of respect... Perhaps that is the key to managing force, simply respecting others

While knowing how to speak forcefully is certainly a valuable skill to have, almost every situation I face in life is better approached with friendly confidence.

I've met a few people who, when a cashier or waiter makes a mistake, think they need to take control, and demand a resolution, and I think they are just being needlessly unpleasant, and get worse outcomes on average because they're being disrespectful.

Agree with that. I think I'm thinking of confident (not disrespectful) force. Just being assertive about what you think you deserve, that sort of thing. And some people are too excessive at it, possibly because others are insufficiently capable of it.

I look at Putin (also clearly a bully) and I think, was there a "posture" that Ukraine could have taken prior to this which would have discouraged him before he committed to what he is doing now? "Promising not to join NATO"? I guess the analogy would be a bully beating up a neighbor's kid to prevent him from joining a rival gang? I don't know. You acquiesce to the bully and usually the bully's demands just go up. Could Putin's advisors have gotten past their fear and been more honest with him? Well, that's the problem with ruling with fear (or perhaps I should say "using fear excessively" with the insinuation that plainly confident (but yet respectful) people do strike a bit of fear in others), you never get the whole truth.

The case of Putin is so far outside anything I've experienced that I don't feel like it would have much meaning for me to agree or disagree with you.

As for confidence striking a bit of fear in others, I've seen that most often with people who find themselves in a position where they are supposed to be a leader, but don't know how to lead. If someone is attempting to use bullying to control their reports, having confident reports can shine a light on the problem and be scary for the incompetent leader.

edit to add: I think confidence is only scary to someone who is attempting to abuse/control.

This. Dominance hierarchies exist, but aren’t alpha, beta whatever. We aren't wolves, we’re more like bonobos.

Not even wolves are this way.

In their family lives, wolves have lifelong monogamous relationships. In their pack lives, wolves have kind of "situational leadership" where they know that wolf X is the best tracker and wolf Y is the best hunter so they follow wolf X to find prey and wolf Y takes lead to hunt it. Other than that, they are pre-democratic - if most of pack wants to do something, the rest follows.

I wouldn’t overfit on bullying. It’s a hazard to be taught, as is traffic, but hardly the dominant culture.

Having been a parent in multiple cultures / countries and talked a lot about parenting with family members in others, Americans seem to talk more than others about bullying yet tolerate it much more than most others.

Speaking as someone who was a teen in the 80's in the United States: The only way to stop a school bully (a person who has learned to use force for personal gain) is with a bigger "bully" (another stronger student, or an administrator who has more force). Therein lies the rub: Might makes right. There's no stable system of sheep because the most wolf-like of them will always emerge to take advantage of the others. You see this in behavior across species, there's like an "aggression equilibrium"; too many wolves result in too much bloodshed; too few and a single wolf obtains an outsize share of resources/social/reproductive capital, or what have you (and thus perpetuates their aggressive genes). Witness every communist system put into place so far: What was envisioned was a system of equals, but nature abhors a vacuum so what you end up getting is a bunch of people considered equals, and a dictator above them all.

And truly, I learned this lesson early on only because of bullying (towards me): The school administration did nothing. The teachers did nothing. I was left to fend for myself... and this is what I learned: If you screw up the courage to stand up to a bully ("display your readiness to use force"), they will often back down. In some cases they will ONLY back down if you resort to physicality (the proverbial "fist to the face"). I learned this lesson again and again- I've had my wrist broken by a bully, but at least he never messed with me again. And as an adult, I've applied this, not in the direct use of force but in the fact that your will is what counts- when fighting traffic tickets, it's you vs. the system.

It shouldn't be surprising that 100% of the bullies I knew (who because I'm a peaceable sort, I actually friended on FB years later) became Republicans. But some of them also became leaders in various things.

My main bully, however, was apparently a troubled sort himself, and ended up taking a shotgun to his own head in front of his family. Spent a week in the ICU before giving up the ghost. Before this happened, I randomly ran into him at a bar. I didn't recognize him at first because he had gained a lot of weight, but one look in the eyes (the eyes always contain the identity of the individual when nothing else does, for some reason) and he immediately said "Let me buy you a beer". I accepted.

On the other hand, speaking as someone who was a teen in the 00s in the UK, I never found that sort of "might makes right" solution worked - when I was violent, I was mocked for my temper, and when I was peaceful I was mocked for my lack of temper.

What ultimately helped was (a) growing a person, and recognising that the people I was choosing to hang out with were often either bullies, or enabling the bullies; and (b) relocating to a new school where I could redefine myself in a way that I was more comfortable with.

School relocation can go in either direction. One of the worst things my parents (unknowingly at the time) did was move our family when I was turning 12. We had just left a parochial school where I was doing fine both academically and socially, and then... a (good) public school with people I never met. All the other dudes had already established "tacit dominance hierarchies" or whatever, and here I come in and mess the whole thing up (another thing that didn't help was the merging of 2 schools into 1 in 7th grade, apparently causing EVERY guy (ok many guys, but not me) to enter "test the other person's mettle mode"). Junior high was HELL as a result. I was a super-late bloomer (or that is what they used to call it; what actually happened in reality is that I had testosterone secretion timing issues and my parents were too frugal to take me to a doctor) and that didn't help either.

I remember 1 fight in grade school, a guy shorter than me picked a fight with me, next thing I know there's a circle of people around us jeering, and me being the nonviolent type managed to snatch him into a headlock and give him a "noogie" (rubbing knuckles on the person's scalp which hurts like a bitch but does no harm) and he said "mercy" pretty quick and I helped him off the floor- I was pretty proud of that resolution... but it WAS ultimately the application of a form of (counter)force.

Correct at all counts. He's two, and I certainly notice that he (and his peers) are starting to experiment with violence as a tool for managing relationships with people and things.

My instinct was also the "take turns using things, but don't assert property rights of things that aren't used".

Where I'm hesitant is some things have incredible emotional value to one person but not to others -- is it not nice to ask others to respect that?

Something else that troubles me is that I certainly don't act that way -- there are many things my wife and I brought into our relationship that we still consider private property, mainly for convenience ("her" drawer is organised according to her needs, for example).

Another thing is purely linguistic habit. While my wife is very good at asking e.g. "can I taste the ice cream" I'm used to phrasing the question as "can I taste your ice cream".

I think “your ice cream” is perfectly appropriate.

The flip side to seeing wealth as communal is that you need to respect the division when it happens. As custodian of the family’s money, you bought everybody ice cream. But some of that ice cream is now yours. It’s your fair share of the ice cream, you picked the flavours and the sprinkles and what not, because it was for you. It’s entirely appropriate, and indeed desirable, to assert ownership over that. Not respecting boundaries is a Bad Thing.

What you can, and should, teach on top of that is generosity. “This is my ice cream and mine alone, but you can taste it if you like.” That sort of idea.

It’s your decision to share, but sharing your ice cream with me means you get to see my smile as I try that really good flavour you asked for, and that smile is really valuable.

"Everything good in life is kindness"

I've read it here on HN few months ago and somehow it stuck with me. I try to look at world, people, relationships etc through this lens, in both positive and negative manifestations of it.

I'll try to teach my kids the reason behind it. Generosity for me is one type of kindness.

I really like this answer, and will apply it with my own children. Thank you!

Your remaining questions I don't have answers for )) Maybe ask me something about Python?

Your example of linguistic habit is excellent, because it demonstrates that the language we use is both descriptive of how we perceive our surroundings, and prescriptive in influencing behaviour. Maybe ask "can I taste the ice cream" but offer "you can taste my ice cream". Children are wiser than us, instead of perceiving a mixed signal I find they usually figure out how to interpret things in surprising ways - that goes for my own children and other peoples' children. They are far more plastic and have less preconceived "bins" to interpret things.

The truth is, most of our questions regarding raising the kids we will not ever get answers for. That's fine, the kids are learning along the way just as we are.

I think you need to decide if you’re trying to raise your child for the world that exists, or the world that you wish existed.