Stickers be damned

I would like to point out that this isn’t a religious statement more a declaration of independence. Quite frankly, far too much independence, but that just goes with the territory. The world of mothers are busy motivating their kiddie winkies with tokens, stickers, prizes and hard cash, but not around here. I’ll have you know that I have more stickers than is healthy for a woman of my advancing years. Their variety is exhaustive but it never quite hits the mark.

The motivation key has always been a bit cloudy for me. I couldn’t imagine myself as a child being persuaded to do, or not do something for that matter, with the bribe of a ‘sticker,’ but it may be just because ‘stickers’ hadn’t been invented in those dark old days. But I digress.


What is the issue here? Motivation! Don’t we just love it, but what exactly is it and where do we find it? I can tell you one thing with confidence, it doesn’t have anything to do with stickers as far as my autistic sons are concerned.
The magic of stickers has long been a mystery to me, but I’ll try anything once, and then six months later, and six months later and so on.

Now we did have a couple of obstacles in our way as far as the sticker debacle was concerned. The first of these was that the average sticker is made of paper. [translation = the substance from hell for the tactilely defensive one] For senior son, the issue is more complicated, in that in order to peel off the sticker successfully from it’s backing you need a good finger grip in the fine motor skills department, which until fairly recently, eluded him completely. There are additional issues for my two. It’s can’t just be any old sticker, it must be a carefully chosen unique choice to most closely match the current obsession. Failure to observe this basic criterion will result in certain failure. Heaven forgive the woman who buys 20 variety sheets of Thomas the Tank engine stickers only to be able to use the one “James” sticker per sheet. Just shoot her now and put her out of her financial weak willed misery. Someone needs to protect her from herself.

I mean, you think she would have learned over the years that this is never going to work, to say nothing of the heebie geebie meltdown that ensues when one of the precious stickers is torn.

I’m afraid that my sympathies are with the children in question;
“Yes mom? You want me to do what? Eat something I hate and in return you will give me a vile paper sticker that I need to peel off myself with my own inky dinky little fingers and then place on another piece of disgustingly textured paper, which incidentally is a very poor colour choice? Right! What exactly is the purpose of this exercise again? Remind me of whatever inherent logic you’re attempting to achieve? You think this is helping? You are so out of your tree! Who is it supposed to be assisting and how? Go away lady, back to the drawing board, you are just so out of line, I can’t begin to even explain it to you.”

I think he covered the salient issues.


























Our only ever single, individualised, successful, nearly 'sticker' campaign!