Sticker Trick: Helping Individuals Get Their Shoes On The Right Feet

By Jessica Jordan, MS, OTR/L

What Is The Sticker Trick?

One of my all time favorite OT tricks for left right discrimination includes the sticker trick! A classic and essential parent hack (for me)!

What Does It Involve?

Take one of your loved ones favorite stickers. It could be of a character, maybe animal, even a truck/car and cut the sticker down the center. Creating two separate pieces! Place each half of the sticker on the inside sole of the shoe, so that when the shoes are placed side by side, the sticker appears as whole. This trick helps any individual with the positional set up for getting their shoes on the right feet!

Adaptations

Our loved ones still might need more support with this task and that’s okay! I’ve also adapted this trick by placing a sticker on the exterior, inner portion of the shoe, so we can encourage our loved one to have the stickers touch. This will really help with positional set up.  Lastly, I just read about an author sharing that she used two permanent markers to draw two arrows pointing to each other.

What Is This Trick Helping?

This hack is so helpful because it assists with the following skills:

• Greater independence with daily life skills 

• Assisting with left/right discrimination 

• When using stickers, it is also challenging visual spatial relationships, perceptual skills and visual form constancy 

• Greater independence with sequencing steps involving daily living skills (I.e. transition to leave the house involves getting on socks, shoes, and a coat). 

We Want To Hear From You!

Are there any other strategies or tricks you’ve used? Let us know! We can’t wait to hear!!