The Case of the Stolen Popcorn

  
Tom is extremely possessive, especially about his popcorn. We learned very quickly to separatne bowls of popcorn, because he’ll assume the entire bowl is his when you give it to him. One night, we had all the aunts and uncles down for a movie night. We made popcorn. We gave everyone their own bowl, like always, so we didn’t have a toddler melt down.

We still had a toddler melt down. And oddly enough, I don’t blame Tom for this one.

Tom’s favorite* aunt decided it would be fun to see if he would share popcorn. She grabbed a few kernels from his bowl. Tom did not appreciate this. He made his displeasure known. Unfortunately, the aunt had eaten the kernels she took from him already, so there was no immediate way to remedy the situation. We grabbed some new popcorn for Tom from the bag, and the crying subsided, eventually.

A related story

On another night this same aunt took a bite of his pizza when he was done with dinner. No reason to waste a good piece of pizza right?

Tom had a fit.

The aunt did the first thing she could think of to appease the little man, and spit the pizza out. Tom immediately snatched the half chewed piece of pizza, popped it in his mouth, and went on with the rest of his night.

How to get a toddler to share

Back to movie night.

After the popcorn stealing incident I had a nice little chat with Tom on the importance of sharing, and informed him we had plenty of popcorn. He could be a good boy and share popcorn, and we could always make some more.

When his uncle asked for him to share some of his popcorn, Tom was initially hesitant. He acquiesced. We rewarded him with praise. Tom shared popcorn with his uncle well past the point of the uncle having his fill. It just kept coming.

His aunt tried to get in on the action, asking if Tom would share some of his popcorn. Tom threw down the meanest mean mug a two year old has ever mugged.

Don’t steal food from a toddler.

*Favorite by number of times requested to see.