My son is always making things. He is also the sort of kid who never really has an answer if you ask him something like, “What do you want for your birthday?” As a result, he has amassed quite a collection of art supplies.
Art is something that Alex enjoys; it is his thing. So, my approach as pretty much been one of letting him be, and giving him the space to do whatever he wants. However, I noticed that he only uses a few of his supplies. He’s branched out a tiny bit, but he seems to only use the the things he’s sure how to use.
So, I wondered what would happen if I asked him to make something with me. I wanted to get him to try watercolors. He was game. We followed a YouTube tutorial and made mom and son paintings.
It was very interesting to follow something step-by-step with him. It illustrated the difference in our personalities/approaches very clearly. I had watched the video once already when I found the activity that I wanted to do with him. Then we watched it together. I followed the steps pretty closely. He followed them loosely. At one point, he realized that he had done something totally different than what the instructions required. He was pretty bummed. I told him to work with it anyway. In my opinion, that’ what made his painting more interesting than mine.
About three quarters of the way through the project, Alex lit up and said, “Hey, we did this in art class.” It was so weird to me that he didn’t realize this until we were almost done. Sort of. It is abundantly clear that the way that Alex processes things is different than the way I do.
He told me that he was glad that we had done the project together and that he would like to do more things like this together in the future. I am determined to take advantage of this while he still feels this way.
My boy was so proud when I shared your comment with him!!