A story about watching my daughter trade stickers and realizing this is how society begins

A month has passed since my daughter started elementary school.

Her brand-new school bag is already getting a bit worn at the corners, and it's starting to look nicely broken in.

By the way, it spends more time lying on the floor than it does on her back.

She leaves it in the entryway when she gets home.

Well, that's fine, I suppose.

What my daughter, once a child of food education, is obsessed with now

The nursery school my daughter attended was a little bit unique.

They would run around in the mountains, grow their own vegetables, and cook them themselves.

Their snacks were raw carrots. Sometimes macaroni with kinako powder.

We were told not to let her watch TV or use smartphones, and we cooperated with that for six years at home.

She knows almost nothing about Disney, Ghibli, YouTube, or video games.

The only exceptions were Nintama Rantaro and Princess Mononoke, which she happened to see at her grandparents' house.

For some reason, she got completely hooked on those and came home talking about them.

After six years of being such a wild child, the first thing my daughter got hooked on after entering elementary school was...

It was...

It was stickers.

The path of stickers, which began with just one.

A few days after starting school, my daughter came home with her eyes sparkling.

"Daddy, look at this!"

What she held out was a single sheet of A5-sized paper with a few stickers on it.

When I asked, she told me a friend had torn a page out of their sticker book to share with her and had also given her a few stickers.

I thought, "How kind."

To offer a page from your own sticker book to a child who has nothing.

And then, to share some of your own stickers with them.

The world of first graders is actually quite precious.

My daughter treasured that one sheet, and every day she would come up to me saying, "Look, look."

Me: "You've stuck so many on there."

Daughter: "Right!"

It was a heartwarming, peaceful time.

The war situation changes with a school entrance gift from my wife

However, after a while, I noticed something.

The girls who gather at the park all have impressive "sticker albums".

Not just a single sheet of paper, but a proper, thick one.

It seems the current sticker culture has evolved more than I imagined.

As a school entrance gift, my wife gave one to our daughter.

A shiny sticker album and a set filled with plenty of stickers.

These, you see, are not the "stickers" I know.

They are plump and three-dimensional, with a translucent quality"Bonbon Drop Stickers"
where only the animal's bottom part is squishy and puffed up"Butt Stickers"
ones filled with liquid inside.
And ones that sparkle.

...Does this even need to be a sticker anymore?

New-age stickers that have completely abandoned the meaning of being flat.

My daughter was overjoyed, sticking them all in her album and gazing at them like treasures every day.

"Isn't this amazing?"
"If you press this, it feels squishy."
"If you hold this up to the light, it sparkles."

In my heart, I thought, "Stickers have evolved way too much."

Now, to the battlefield of sticker trading

On a day off.
My daughter made her debut at the park with her sticker album.

And then, what do you know?

Older girls I'd never even spoken to before started gathering around my daughter one after another.

"Do you have stickers?"
"Let me see, let me see."
"Let's trade."

My daughter's social debut had begun spectacularly, along with her sticker album.

By the way, I was watching from afar on a bench.

Because if I got any closer, I'd just be in the way.

Watching my daughter's world suddenly expand through her sticker book, I was even a little moved.

I thought, 'Ah, so this is how human relationships expand.'

It doesn't really matter, but there is something that bothers me.

Ever since my daughter started coming home from the park, she has made it a habit to come to me and show me her sticker book.

'Daddy, want to see my stickers?'

Honestly, I'm not very interested in stickers.

But it's a game my daughter enjoys, so I listen along, saying 'Uh-huh, uh-huh.'

Before I knew it, I had memorized the Sanrio characters.

'This is Kuromi-chan.'
'This is Kuromi-chan.'
'This is also Kuromi-chan.'

There are a lot of Kuromi-chans.

But I suppose that's just what's popular among first graders.

One day, I was flipping through the sticker book.

Suddenly, I felt something was off.

...It feels a bit thin, doesn't it?

When my wife first gave it to her, it was supposed to be a pretty substantial sticker book.

But now, as I flip through it, it feels sparse overall.

In particular, those highlight stickers, the Bonbon Drop stickers and the butt stickers, are almost nowhere to be found.

Me: 'Huh? What happened to the butt stickers Mom bought you?'

My daughter answered proudly.

Daughter: 'I traded them with the big girls!'

Me: "...what did you trade it for?" Daughter: "This!"

That's what she said as she held it out.

Some stickers that had clearly seen better days.

They had a weathered look that made it easy to guess they had passed through many different hands.

Among them were stickers so worn that you couldn't even tell what character they were supposed to be.

Some were so dirty it was actually off-putting.

Me: "...Hmm, well, that's nice."

That was all I could say.

The impressive negotiation skills of the older students

I found out later through a mom friend.

Sticker culture is apparently quite the economic activity.

Especially for new first-graders, who are apparently prime "targets."

Because they have plenty of brand-new, latest-model, unused stickers in their shiny sticker books.

That's when the older students approach them with gentle smiles.

"This one is super rare, you know." "Let's trade this of mine for that." "This is a limited edition."

...And that is how brand-new stickers get traded away for weathered, peeling ones.

In psychological terms, this is built on a combination of "the endowment effect" and "the principle of reciprocity".

There are moments when people value what they are about to get more than what they currently have.

And when someone is kind to you, you feel the urge to give something back.

The moment they are told, "I'll share my stickers with you," their hearts are already half-won over to the older girls' side.

Moreover, my daughter is a wild child who has had "let's share with everyone" drilled into her for six years at nursery school.

Her resistance to kindness was hopelessly zero.

My wife's intense coaching begins.

I reported this situation to my wife.

My wife checked the sticker book in silence, then said one thing.

Wife: "...She's being completely taken advantage of."

Then, she began to teach our daughter, gently but calmly.

If you like your sticker, you don't have to trade it if you don't want to.
You need to look closely and decide if that sticker is really worth that much.
It's okay to go home and think about it first.

The household sticker countermeasures headquarters has been established.

At first, my daughter resisted, saying, "But the older girl was so cute."

But after a few exchanges, a light began to shine in her eyes.

"...Actually, now that you mention it, I think my butt sticker was better."

Yes. She had realized it.

There are negotiations in this world that wear the skin of kindness.

My daughter has grown up a little.

Today's lesson.

There is a psychological concept called the "endowment effect."

People have a tendency to value what they own more than its actual worth.

...Or so the textbook says.

However, it seems to be a bit different in the field of sticker trading.

In the case of a first-grader, the moment they are spoken to kindly, the "endowment effect" simply vanishes.

And then, the stickers belonging to the older girl right in front of them suddenly start to look attractive.

Adults do this often, too.

It's that thing where the moment you're told at a sale, "This is the last one," you suddenly want it.

It's that thing where you calm down, bring it home, and wonder, "...Why did I buy this?"

No matter how old people get, they are weak at negotiation.

And no matter how old people get, they are weak against "people who are kind to them."

My daughter.
Receiving that baptism at age six is probably a good thing.

#WhatAreYouTalkingAbout

P.S. While looking at her sticker book, my daughter muttered to herself.

Daughter: "But, even these tattered stickers have so many different things, and I like them just the way they are."

...I was taught a lesson by a six-year-old.

Value is not about whether something is new or old.

It's about whether or not someone's memories are packed into it.

...No, but still, the butt sticker was a shame to lose.

That was a pretty expensive one.

If you are interested in "psychology learned from trivial daily events," I recommend this as well.

I deliver new discoveries for those in their 40s and life improvement techniques that don't involve just wearing underwear.