After looking at the pics of Z I felt the need to blog about not just his propensity towards grouchiness but one of his little quirks. He has an ingrained and intense phobia.Of stickers.
I first became aware of his fear during a co-op preschool activity that involved placing apples stickers on a tree. Grabbing his picture of the tree, running from me in panic, he had an all out melt down. At first I thought it was an isolated incident, but some number of days following the apple tree trauma, we went to Wal-Mart where a nice older man offered Z a round, yellow smiley face sticker. Z screamed 'NO!', literally in terror, and buried his face in my arm -whimpering. After that, when ever we went to Wal-Mart, he would fall apart. Clearly traumatized, he would frequently tell me how much he hated the 'sticker man'. I won't go into detail about the primary(church class) pajama party that required kids to wear a 'hello my name is' sticker. Suffice to say, it wasn't pretty.
His phobia extends, though not as severely, to stamps. Last summer, after exiting the 'most magical place on earth' we each recieved an invisible hand stamp so we could return to the park later. I had to force him to get his stamp, then though he couldn't even see it, he glared at his hand and angrily exclaimed "Oh! I hate Disneyland!"
A few weeks ago, I got him to do a workbook activity involving stickers, so I was hopeful that this weird phase was over, or at least that we were making progress .
I was wrong.
Yesterday, we went to a craft store. As I was walking down the scrapbook/sticker isle. Z got all fidgety till finally tearfully exclaiming "Can I just wait for you over there? I can smell stickers everywhere!"
9 comments:
HAHAHAHA!!!! He can smell them?!?! That is so funny! Oh boy!
Well, I guess being scared of stickers is not as wierd as some of the things I am scared of.
Smell the stickers huh? YOu must have been in the scratch and sniff section.
You also forgot to mention that the sticker phobia extends to patches on clothes as well. And maybe he takes after Heather just a little bit due to the strange phobia's!
What a crack-up! One day my friend informed me that Kaleb's fear of the vacuum cleaner must represent a past vacuum-cleaner related trauma (or which there had been none). Wonder what she'd say about the stickers?
i so watched ferris beuhler's day off when i was younger, I love that one, it's so classic.
Oh my gosh! That is a funny phobia. I hope he is able to move beyond it. Thank goodness none of your kids are sticker collectors.
I have to say - I'm 24 now, and thought i'm not deathly afraid of them any more, stickers STILL give me the eeks. Always have! The best way to describe having to walk around with a sticker on (even a "hello my name is" atop a sweater) is that it feels a little like walking around with a leech attached - you can't always feel it, but you know it's there, and it makes you feel pretty gross.
I'd expect the avoidant tactics to continue until he's a fair bit older, and gets generally desensitized, and can just manoeuvre around them. I'm a fine with putting stickers ON things, nowadays (envelopes, etc). But lord knows don't ask me to wear one, or put one on me - it makes my skin crawl!
such a strange phobia, never known why i have it. Ho hum.
Oh my gosh. I have this same phobia. I have no idea where it came from, but I was that way as a kid and still am as an adult! Ewwwwwwww stickers are disgusting and make me gag a little.
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