One day my walls will have what the world deems "real art" covering them, but I will miss all the pages of traced hand prints & watercolor painted zoo animals. One day my fridge will be "clutter-free" with a random magnet or Christmas card here or there. BUT I will miss their little work pages from Sunday school & family portraits drawn from the eyes of a 3 year old. So, I shall just embrace my great love for all things made by children until that sad day comes.
Which finally brings me to the topic of today's post. Pictures done by kids! Now, I have been blessed to work with children majority of my life & I have learned a lot (& STILL AM LEARNING A LOT). One thing that I learned that may seem so small & meaningless to some, once it was pointed out to me, is now huge in my eyes. What you say when I child shows you a picture. Believe it or not, the main response a young child gets from an adult when they bring them a picture is "What is it?". Now, I totally get it. Adults don't mean it with a bad heart & YES majority of things kids draw, especially early on, are extremely hard to identify! BUT the seemingly harmless choice in words speaks volumes to a child. From their perspective it is clear as day what they have drawn. They are so confident in their skill set early on & initially think they are great at whatever they attempt to create. Which is an awesome fearlessness to have, but most kids soon lose.
I think that with everything we do we should do it with great intention. Simply changing "What is it?" to "Can you describe your picture to me?" can accomplish great things! 1) You are encouraging the child to really think, describe, & use their words. It blows me away sometimes with how intricate their minds can go with this extremely detailed story when all we see on the page are a squiggly line or 2. You are also preparing them for the future to be even more explicit later on in their writing & even just talking in general. Even if it takes a lil' prompting by you to build on what they said already to help them learn to be even more descriptive. For example, "I like how you drew the man walking, where is he walking to or what do you think the weather is like?". 2) With this simple change up in wording, you are also helping to build your child's confidence in what they have created. As I mentioned early, majority of parents mean nothing wrong when they are saying "What is it?", but by simply changing your wording slightly you are eliminating the possibility of unintentionally hurting a child's feelings or causing them to feel like what they have created is not very good.
Like I said before, some may think this is not a big deal at all & think I may be overthinking the whole thing, but I would like to ask, what could it hurt to be just a little more intentional with your choice in wording? You could teach your child a lot & build even more confidence in them & in my opinion-This is a GREAT thing!
-M&M Momma
