Collecting and trading is something most of us have done as children. What are the life skills children learn from this? What are the problems?

As a child, you probably collected something - marbles, cards, toy figures,  objects like coloured stones. You may remember swapping or trading parts of your collection.  Children who like to collect the same things often form great friendships and spend lots of time socialising, comparing and trading. Many objects, like cards, are sold in ways that encourage children to trade.  Rare cards are highly sought after and children will often compete with each other to gain these special cards to add to their growing collections. 

Children who want to increase their collections can learn about how to earn or manage money to buy more.   They might decide to take on jobs at home to earn pocket money.  They may learn to budget to get the best deals or how to save their birthday money.   These early life skills help them develop more understanding about the value of things and that it isn't always possible to get what you want straight away. 

Trading helps children develop skills in negotiation and communication.  Children learn the value of their objects and decision making - Is the card I really want worth giving someone several of my cards? How many cards am I prepared to give to get one I really want?  What is a fair trade?  Have I made a bad trade and how can I deal with it?  If you collected something you may remember a time when you felt you weren't treated fairly.   

Children can develop a sense of value at different times to their friends, or others in the group, and this is where problems occur.   Younger children may place more value on the number of cards they can gain while older children may be more selective and  persuade others to give up those special cards for others of minimal value. When this happens at school teachers become involved in having to manage disgruntled children and this takes away time from planned learning programmes.  Another problem teachers face is having children who become so engrossed in their collections that their focus on important school learning tasks is interrupted.  

Recently we have noticed that Pokemon cards have been causing these types of problems at school and we would like your support in dealing with these.  If your child hasn't yet developed a strong sense of value they may have experienced some unfair trading which has made them unhappy.   They may need your help to learn about how to decide what is a fair trade.   If your child is very focussed on their cards and they find it difficult to put them away to do other things we encourage you have them keep the cards at home.   

The easiest way for a school to deal with these problems is to ban the cards.  We are reluctant to do this as we understand the joy and benefits to children who like them.   For the next two weeks we will be asking children to manage themselves to reduce the number of issues.   Children need to put their cards away during class learning times, finish playing with them promptly when breaks end, and to not trade if it causes problems.  We will review how things are goingin the hope that we can continue to let children enjoy their cards at school. We would love your support to help children understand how to achieve this.