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I don’t know if teachers still do this, but when I was little, a gold star sticker next to your name was an accomplishment to be proud of. It could be on a graded test, or more often on some kind of chart at the front of the classroom. You had to earn that gold star.
But now, as an adult, nobody recognizes my silly little accomplishments. I flossed every night this week? Who cares? Well, I care. And I’m giving myself a gold star.
I’m not kidding. You can buy those little gold stars from Amazon. These are ½-inch and have a holographic glitter pattern. You get 1,200 of them for under five bucks. Or bring back even more memories with ⅜-inch colored smiley faces: You get 12,000 of them in the pack, plus a few gold stars (for those truly special moments). To find more similar stickers, search for “chore chart stickers” or “reward stickers.”
How I use my precious gold star stickers
And, yes, I really do use them to motivate me to floss. After a dentist appointment earlier this year, I decided I’d make the leap from a person who almost never flosses (sorry, ew) to a person who flosses sometimes. But I knew I’d need some help sticking to the plan for the full six months until my next appointment. I taped a piece of notebook paper to the inside of my bathroom cabinet, and aimed for at least two gold stars each week.
When I went back, my hygienist was not impressed. My teeth were still not as clean as they could be. (She liked the gold star idea when I told her about it though.) Could I make sure to brush twice and floss every day? You know what I had to do: I started a new chart.
Gold stars aren’t just for flossing
Why did I have gold stars on hand in the first place? They came from a pack similar to the smiley-face one I linked above. I bought those for my young daughter, who wanted a way to remember whether she had fed her pet fish each day. She would put a sticker on each day of her Baby Yoda calendar after dropping in the pellets. (Eventually she remembered well enough on her own that she stopped using the stickers, and I inherited the remaining 11,000+.)
You’ll notice that I’ve switched back to the colored stickers for my flossing chart. That’s because I gave my remaining sheet of gold stars to my teenage son, whose doctor asked him to be as consistent as possible with some habits (drinking water, eating breakfast, taking certain supplements) as a first step in working through a health issue. He’s filling out his own gold star chart now, and I’m so proud.
