The Cookie Challenge Is Putting Toddlers To The Test And Finding Out How Good They Are At Sharing
Sharing is caring, right? Perhaps you have seen the cookie challenge (#cookiechallenge) pop up on your For You Page on TikTok, where parents are putting their toddlers to the test to find out how good they are at sharing.
The challenge involves parents placing plates in front of themselves and their toddlers, and the plates are covered up so the kids can’t see what’s on the plate.
One parent goes first and uncovers what’s on their plate – one cookie. Their child is the second to reveal what’s on their plate – two cookies.
Finally, the other parent finds out what’s on their plate, and it’s empty. That parent then verbally conveys to their toddler that they’re unhappy to have no cookies to enjoy.
The whole point of this fun little challenge is to wait and see if the toddler is willing to share one of their cookies with their parent who received nothing, or if they keep them both for themself.
It certainly makes for some pretty wholesome and adorable content!
Do Toddlers Like To Share?
Sharing is a lesson that many parents teach their kids, but do toddlers like to share? An interesting study conducted in 2012 and titled To share or not to share: When do toddlers respond to another’s needs? explored if 18- and 25-month-old kids would be willing to share snacks with adults.
Researchers were able to determine that as a child approaches the end of their two-year-old year, they’re more willing to share food on a voluntary basis, but this greatly relies on whether or not the person they’re sharing with verbally communicated that they wanted the food the toddler had.
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Additionally, they noted that sharing is a pretty challenging concept for kids to grasp, so they gain a better handle on it as they age.
“One important feature of the procedures used in the current study is that sharing is not costly for the child,” the researchers wrote.
“That is, children are not required to make a sacrifice in order to share with someone else, but only to consider the other person’s desire or need. Toddlers are known for their possessiveness (e.g., Hay, 2006), which may make giving up something they value to someone else, even temporarily, especially difficult.”
“Young children might be more likely to share under no-cost conditions, allowing us to observe the earliest instances of this core aspect of prosocial behavior.”
The results from their study indicated that children who are two years old are happy to share food with people they are not related to if they don’t suffer a “cost” to share, but this was reliant upon whether or not that adult verbally indicated their desire for the snack the child had.
They also determined that 18-month-olds don’t share at all, even if an adult says they like the snack they have, meaning the younger kids are concerned with their own desires and don’t seem to think about the desires of others.
You can read the study here.
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