Every time my son Takeh successfully uses the potty, I give him a sticker.
The sticker is attached to the bathroom door so he can put it wherever he wants.
The backing paper has a picture of a railroad track and a train, and the sticker has a picture of a passenger car. Basically, the stickers are placed in order, starting with the back of the first car.
However, children’s taste is different from adults’, and sometimes they put the stickers upside down or on a field where there is no track.
In such cases, it is difficult to decide whether it is better to point out that the stickers are upside down or to leave them as they are and say, “This is also a child’s individuality, and it is right to warmly observe it”.
I think it would be better for him to know common sense first, even as I try to nurture his individuality, so I choose my words carefully, not to deny what he is doing, but to guide his pattern of behavior toward what adults think is a common-sense way to put a sticker on a sticker.
Is that really the right thing to do? I always wonder.
While I was wondering, he did the Great Reset, which is to “rip off the base paper by hand all at once and peel off most of the stickers that have been applied so far”.
When he’s happy, I say, “Now I can have fun putting stickers on again!” I would have been impressed with his wisdom if he had been happy, but all he did was peel off the stickers and make a mess. He was just a wrecker.
After he left the bathroom, leaving the removed stickers in place, I rearranged the removed stickers “adult style” and taped them to the bottom with cellophane tape so they would never come off again.
(2023.05.15)
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