[bolt.]

with young kids, does teaching verbally do any good after they have been removed from the situation?

At 2, I don't do anything exclusively verbally. Perhaps it makes more sense to call it 'teaching through pantomime' rather than teaching verbally. Basically you would re-create a similar situation, but without the intensity, perhaps with yourself playing the part of a child too.

I never used "gentle touches" in the situation when a child is hitting. I don't need the child to touch gently, and s/he probably doesn't want to be doing that. The only thing I need is for the child to cease 'touching painfully' -- in which case, not touching at all is a perfectly valid option. So, in looking for a command of what 'to do' the best I could come up with was, "nice or nothing" -- which isn't as clear as I usually like for a command/instruction, but it's the best I could do.

(I also use, "eat tidy" instead of the more specific instruction about food and plates. I like my commands/instructions to be kind of broad in scope, so their aren't so many to learn... "eat tidy" means lots of things, so it is good and flexible, as well as being clear.)

The point of that kind of verbalization during toddler re-direction (and even with babies) is simply to define the words for him/her, so that they are familiar to the child, and they begin to seem 'written in stone' as a natural part of the cause-and-effect universe... since every time they get said, they effectively happen, and it never happens that they are said and the thing doesn't happen.

(This sneaking commands/instructions into their cause-and-effect scheme early seriously eases the years up to about 4.5, when they suddenly realize that they have the capacity to buck the system that they have previously accepted as "just the way reality is." -- Which is one of the reasons to have a very few specific and recognizable commands, rather than using more conversational and situational instructions all over the map at the toddler age.)

If sharing is not an age appropreate skill to be teaching a particualr child, then you wouldn't teach it at all. But if your method of teaching includes plently of kindness and fun, and occurs outside of the moment -- there's no harm in giving it a try, just to see whether the child can or can't pick it up just now.