To Play or Not to Play

It is fascinating to watch the differing style of play and children interacting that take place when children are at play. The age, gender and exposure a child has experienced seems to effect the play style. But do more subtle differences arise because a child is lives in an authoritarian home, make to sleep by themselves, when cries are ignored, when children are shamed because they do something natural like self exploration change the way they play? What makes a child bite or hit to achieve the "right" to play with a toy over another person? While I feel my children play well I am also aware of the unfortunate nature of being polite in a world that is largely focuses on "me". My heart feels for my 3 year as he tries to share, negotiate and reason with children who don't apparently know how to and who will ruthlessly take what they want without a care in the world. I feel I want to go in a bat for him to make it more fair but feel this is not fair for him either. I trust that we have raise him with a high level of emotional intelligence and empathy for others and saw this today first hand.