Sticker Shock
May 11, 2017
You know what my kids love?
Stickers!
Do you know what they don't love?
Sticker books. Or paper of any kind.
Please do not send them any more stickers.
I feel like they have enough.
Go ahead and bookmark this for any upcoming Gift Guides For Parents You Secretly Hate, though.
Wait, didn't I scrape you off already? Are you respawning? Shit.
The weirdest thing about stickers is even after you've gotten rid of all the stickers, kids will always -- always -- find more stickers.
TRULY. LIFE FINDS A WAY.
(One time Ike ran out of stickers and decided to cover the entire bottom half of his door strips of Scotch Tape, which I guess was a little worse than stickers.)
(Still, though. Please no more stickers. I could use more Scotch Tape, but only if it comes in a locked safe of some kind.)
My younger daughter just turned 13 (13! Eep) and STILL has those stupid little stickers you get on fruit stuck on the end of her bed. And of course she refuses to let me remove them. There are also various other, more typical, stickers in various places all round the house. I'm far too lazy to have ever been bothered to try and remove them, and now fear the glue has become permanent anyway.
Yeah, I hate stickers too. But not as much as I hate HAND SPINNERS or FIDGET CUBES or (worst of all) the BOTTLE FLIP CHALLENGE and the ghastly WHOOSH-THUNK noise it involves.
Posted by: Kirsty | May 11, 2017 at 02:11 PM
Eventually they grow up a little and it becomes bumper stickers. We got a new-ish car this week, and my son is busy planning the stickers. "Let's see, the Chiefs on the left, just an arrowhead, nothing else on it, and a Grateful Dead steal-your face in the middle, and..."
Posted by: Judy | May 11, 2017 at 02:15 PM
It's like they are marking territory with stickers. Please, no one give my kids are stickers either.
Also, I feel like this is something I would have gotten into so much trouble for as a child, and I'm way too soft on them about.
Posted by: Olivia | May 11, 2017 at 03:26 PM
I've been reading you for a long time, was it you that had a fruit sticker in the diaper incident years ago, or another blogger?? ;)
Posted by: Rachel | May 11, 2017 at 03:26 PM
Lol, Rachel it was this post that you're thinking of, I totally thought about it too: http://www.amalah.com/amalah/2008/08/bait-tackle.html
Posted by: Allison | May 11, 2017 at 03:40 PM
Yes! Yes! That's my life with a 4 yr old! Including the scotch tape obsession... well at least it keeps him busy a good 30 mins. Totally worth it!
Posted by: C | May 11, 2017 at 04:02 PM
My granddaughter decorates my home with stickers. Papa's John Deere has princesses on it. When our children put stickers everywhere is was ever so annoying. However, as grandparents we find it immensely amusing.
Posted by: Cie | May 11, 2017 at 05:04 PM
I finally had to hide Sharpies and scotch tape from the kids because coloring with permanent marker (duh).... and the amount of tape they went through was enough to fill the garbage bin every week.
Posted by: Michelle | May 11, 2017 at 05:14 PM
Ok, having seen GOTG Vol 2 this past weekend, I can't resist: "Does anyone have any tape?!?"
Posted by: reenie | May 11, 2017 at 05:18 PM
My Lisa Frank sticker covered closet door still hangs in my dad's house. My parents had an ugly divorce when I was in high school so this dumb door is one of the only childhood relics that I have. When my (now 14 yr old) sticker-loving daughter discoverer the inside of the door when she was in preschool, she was equally appalled & elated at the idea of me being a naughty kid. :)
While I've managed to refrain from sticking them on doors in recent years, I'm still a sicker for browsing the sticker isle at the craft store. JUST TO LOOK! Ok, fine, I might be a sucker for a sushi themed sticker but that's it.
Posted by: Magan | May 11, 2017 at 05:45 PM
Hey, stickers are awesome. Stickers are sufficiently awesome that my hyper 3 year old could tolerate a longish grocery shopping trip is we bought a couple of $1 dollar packets of stickers first.
3 year old: "But where can I put them?"
me: "Oh, just put them on me"
3 year old follows me through the store, putting stickers on the back of my overalls.
older lady in store: "What a great way to keep her close to you!"
4 or 5 hours pass.....
neighbor: "Do you know that you have stickers all over your butt?"
Posted by: Elizabeth | May 11, 2017 at 06:00 PM
i almost stopped going to trader joe's because of it.
Posted by: C | May 11, 2017 at 06:28 PM
two words: Noah's diaper
Posted by: Miriam | May 12, 2017 at 06:53 AM
Oy, with the stickers...we have a couple of doors and windows covered in them. I have this fantasy that, someday, we'll replace the hollow-core bedroom doors and single-pane, leaky windows with nicer, more solid versions, thus relegating their sticker-ed counterparts to history. We'll see if that happens, though.
Posted by: Jenny | May 12, 2017 at 10:38 AM
So my kids do this (though they keep it limited to their rooms, which isn't too bad), but... uh... so do I. I have an upper cabinet in my bathroom, and the inside of that door is my dumping ground for stickers that I somehow end up with that I like enough to not throw away. I guess I should have outgrown this at some point (see the still-stickered bathroom mirror in my parents' house for my earlier work), but oh well.
Posted by: Kate | May 12, 2017 at 01:06 PM
My very own husband works for a company that makes (actually awesome) stickers and routinely brings home gobs of them. We give them to teachers on the regular, but plenty get squirreled away by my children and stuck to all the things. There are no less than forty stickers on different parts of our lovely hardwood floors at any given moment.
Posted by: Melissa | May 12, 2017 at 01:39 PM
Yes! So glad my kids aren't the only ones who do this. :)
Posted by: Dori | May 12, 2017 at 02:29 PM
Ermahgosh, @MIRIAM!!! LOLOL! It took me a couple of seconds, but...HAHAHA!!! :,-) Crying-laughing.
Posted by: RzDrms | May 12, 2017 at 05:28 PM
If you're my children and you run out of stickers you use three full sheets of postage stamps. Gah.
Posted by: Alison | May 13, 2017 at 08:19 PM
Colorforms! Instead!
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dtoys-and-games&field-keywords=colorforms
Posted by: Lisa | May 15, 2017 at 11:02 AM
Eeek! I hate stickers or any kind of adhesive. Seriously as a kid I couldn't stand them unless they went straight to paper and even then I didn't love them. I hate the feeling of them pulling off your skin - or the fuzz, hair, dirt they pick up, I hate the residue they leave behind and the sound they make when pulling off of fabric. So now as a parent - I hate stickers even more. I'm such an awful parent. I tell my kids I'm allergic and cant touch them - they always want to put them on me and other surfaces (see photos above) but I go crazy, so they now know stickers ONLY go on paper and then that paper goes in the trash when they aren't looking.
Your photos brought severe anxiety to my day! ;-) Thanks!
Posted by: Carrie | May 15, 2017 at 11:15 AM