You know what I really hate?

[conuly]

I've seen it in movies (Monsters, Inc. comes to mind) and on TV, and even in books.

I really hate when we have a pre-verbal child who communicates amazingly well with neat, accurate pictures.

Let's clear this up once and for all. If you have a pre-verbal child, and they're at an age where being pre-verbal is expected (once they pass that, all bets are off, of course), chances are that their "art" is pretty damn abstract. More like what the rest of us would call "scribbles". Sure, they may *say* it's a flower, if you prompt them into labeling it at all, but it could just as easily be a truck and nobody would know the difference. (Heck, at that age, you can easily ask them "What is that?" and get the answer "I don't know" or ask "Is that a flower?" and then, after being told "yes" go "I thought it was a truck!" and hear them say "Oh, it is a truck". There you go.)

Even when they start doing representational art (and I'm assured by people who know more about this than I do that the early age for this is three, at which point most kids are talking in sentences, even if nobody outside their family understands them), they're not going to draw these amazing, easy-to-recognize pictures. They're going to draw circles with lots of lines and call them spiders. Or suns. Or flowers. They'll do blocks with a few lines and dots and say they're people. Or cats. Or elephants. They'll do squiggly circles, those are hearts. Or lakes. Or clouds. Or wheels. Or the letter o. Or flowers. Or I don't know what.

So, a kid who can't talk and turns to art in frustration? Well, I won't go so far as to say it's totally impossible but... yeah, actually, it mostly is. If they can't talk, and you don't find that strange? Odds are that they can't draw either. And even if they can, you're sure as heck not gonna know what they mean when they do.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of artwork, a special note to certain parents (who, I'm sure, will have no idea I mean them):

I see you and your ilk all the time when out and about. You have to have a piece of artwork for the memory books.

Thing is? It's not your spider, or jellyfish, or paper flower. It's your toddler's.

And it's not about the product anyway, it's the process.

So when your kid isn't putting the eyes on "just right", don't correct them. When your kid doesn't want to color in the entire surface of the paper plate, but just wants to scribble on it? That's fine. Don't correct your child, and for crying out loud, stop taking the project away from your kids to do it right! Grow the fuck up already! Your kid is two, and you're already trying to thwart his/her budding creativity!

Seriously. If it's so important to you, ask the teacher and get your own damn craft stuff and do your own damn project. Maybe, if you're really nice, we can even hang it up in the window for you. Wouldn't that be fun?

Some people....

Edit: Just noting that feebeeglee's kids don't count in this, they're pretty exceptional. And she has a lot of kids :) so she should know! I still maintain that this sort of thing is nowhere near common enough to merit its frequency in fiction.

Comments

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with everything you said here!

[conuly]

Yeah, the woman taking the jellyfish from her child to "fix" it was a new one by me, but I think the one that takes the cake has got to be the one who told her daughter she was coloring a lollipop wrong because "see the teacher's? It has to have circles. Like the teacher's"

I could have screamed. I quite possibly should have, but I'm not sure anybody there would have appreciated it.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

The whole charm of kids art work is little stuff like the eyes in the wrong place or feet coming off the head. I love it BECAUSE it's so imperfectly perfect and so bizarre. I just can't imagine fixing it, unless it was an adult's project that the child was helping with (and even then, I wouldn't ask for a child's help if I couldn't accept their creative input)... I can't even understand the lollipop mother. I think I would die if I had THAT little creativity!

[conuly]

What really gets me is that these are the people who coo over Ana's work, because she does her jellyfish with a frown and a whole backstory, or she does dots in a heart pattern or whatever. "She's so creative!"

But they don't see that they're the reason their own kids don't do this sort of thing. They actively work to hinder their kids in this area.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of a song Harry Chapin sang, called "Flowers Are Red".

[conuly]

Googled it. Really depressing song.

There was a post in mock_the_stupid way, way back about a kid in kindergarten (probably the OP) who got lectured by her teacher for drawing the apples on her tree green instead of red, and the sun, I think, orange instead of yellow.

Her mother stood up for her, thankfully, and she wasn't bothered again, but seriously.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Hey, that was me, only my mother didn't stand up for me.

(Because everyone knows that apples are RED. Nevermind our orchard full of Yellow Transparent (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Yellow_Transparent.jpg), Northern Spies (http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.asp?item_no=S15705),

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] gravensteins</a>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

Hey, that was me, only my mother didn't stand up for me.

(Because everyone knows that apples are RED. Nevermind our orchard full of <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Yellow_Transparent.jpg">Yellow Transparent</a>, <a href="http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.asp?item_no=S15705">Northern Spies</a>, <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gravenstein_close-up.JPG"Gravensteins</a> and <a href="http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark/apples/TompkinsCoKing1.jpg">Tompkins Kings</a>, apples are RED.)

There's an interesting bias even in the photos of the varieties I searched above--they always turned out green with a red blush at the most when we grew them, but people seem to have posted the reddest apples they could find to photograph.

[conuly]

Well, damn. I could've sworn the story ended on a happy (ish) note.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that, our WiFi went down and I could neither correct my HTML nor refine my phrasing.

I meant to say only that a very similar event happened to me, not that I was the OP.

[conuly]

Oh.

Well, now I feel really bad. Bad enough to happen once, but twice? That's just... wrong.

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

My (5 of the 6 are applicable here) kids all drew at very different ages and talked at very different ages so it doesn't seem strange to me at all. I've had extremely late talkers (3.5ish) and extremely early drawers (2.5ish.)

As usual it didn't occur to me that other people might have had different experiences.

[conuly]

Was your 2.5 year old drawing at the same level as your average five or six year old? (And was that kid the same as the really late talker?)

Because that's what I'm talking about here. Oh, I wish I had some screenshots to prove my point...!

Though, if that is the case, I'm duly impressed and will add a disclaimer that some people really are that cool.

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

The 2.5 year old was drawing as well as a 4-5 year old before he was 3. None of my other kids drew that well til they were actually 4 or 5. And he wasn't a great talker, on the low end I'd say.

The 3.5 year old late talker is a different kid. He was reading at 2 years though, we now know. (He's the autie of course.)

[conuly]

Okay. Your 2.5 year old is pretty amazing! I'll concede the point - while still saying it's not anywhere near normal enough to justify how often we see it in fiction.

The other one sounds cool too, of course. Why talk if you can read?

[leora.livejournal.com]

I have never been particularly artistic. With teaching and practice I've done some decent things at times, but I'm not especially good at art. We have a few of my early stuff, from when I was about 5. One of them is a drawing of my family. I am fairly sure I had help with it from my kindergarten teacher (at a minimum, I had prompting about what to draw and she labeled each family member with their name (often misspelled, unfortunately as I was too young to know how to spell and not all of my family members have the most common spellings for their names)). Looking at it... well, you can tell they are people. But there's no way to tell which is which. They're not even properly proportional with the tallest ones in my family being tallest. There would be no way to identify them except that I was asked who each one was and the teacher wrote down names. I would have had no idea it was meant to represent my family otherwise. And that was at 5 with direction. I am fairly certain that any drawing I did when I was 3 or younger (and I was talking at 2) would have been amazingly incomprehensible. Part of how I drew in kindergarten was because I had been taught tricks to make recognizable stick figuresque people. Before that... people forget how hard it is to coordinate hand movements to do what you want them to do and to figure out how to combine shapes to make things recognizable. I just didn't know how to. I could picture things in my head, but I had no idea how to make that picture come out on paper.

So, yeah, I wouldn't expect a non-verbal child to draw something clear. Besides, I've faced the awkwardness of trying to tell a child that that is a very nice picture... even though I have no idea what it is a picture of.

[conuly]

Which is another reason I avoid "what a beautiful picture", going instead with "Wow, you used a lot of purple, is that your favorite?" or "Tell me about your picture" or "It sure looks like you had a lot of fun doing this picture/worked hard doing this picture" and things of that nature.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

I dunno...

Topher has turned in frustration to drawing when he doesn't have a word for something. A ractangle with a line across it is juice in a cup (as proven by his approval when he gets it, milk is him saying 'mmmmmmmm'), and lots of little circles are crackers, or occassionally blueberries. Triangles with a line out of the top is a strawberry when he wants those. I definitely prefer it over his previous way of screeching his head off. Taking away Topher's 'handy dandy notebook' is a punishable offence, and Seth knows it.

But then, he's not exactly normal. :-p

[conuly]

1. That's really special in the good sense :)

2. That's also not the type of drawing I mean. I mean really clear artwork. He's a bit early to be doing that sort of thing (and that's so cool), but he's still not drawing, by your description, as neatly and clearly as the kids in these shows and movies.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with everything you said here!

[conuly]

Yeah, the woman taking the jellyfish from her child to "fix" it was a new one by me, but I think the one that takes the cake has got to be the one who told her daughter she was coloring a lollipop wrong because "see the teacher's? It has to have circles. Like the teacher's"

I could have screamed. I quite possibly should have, but I'm not sure anybody there would have appreciated it.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

The whole charm of kids art work is little stuff like the eyes in the wrong place or feet coming off the head. I love it BECAUSE it's so imperfectly perfect and so bizarre. I just can't imagine fixing it, unless it was an adult's project that the child was helping with (and even then, I wouldn't ask for a child's help if I couldn't accept their creative input)... I can't even understand the lollipop mother. I think I would die if I had THAT little creativity!

[conuly]

What really gets me is that these are the people who coo over Ana's work, because she does her jellyfish with a frown and a whole backstory, or she does dots in a heart pattern or whatever. "She's so creative!"

But they don't see that they're the reason their own kids don't do this sort of thing. They actively work to hinder their kids in this area.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of a song Harry Chapin sang, called "Flowers Are Red".

[conuly]

Googled it. Really depressing song.

There was a post in mock_the_stupid way, way back about a kid in kindergarten (probably the OP) who got lectured by her teacher for drawing the apples on her tree green instead of red, and the sun, I think, orange instead of yellow.

Her mother stood up for her, thankfully, and she wasn't bothered again, but seriously.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Hey, that was me, only my mother didn't stand up for me.

(Because everyone knows that apples are RED. Nevermind our orchard full of Yellow Transparent (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Yellow_Transparent.jpg), Northern Spies (http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.asp?item_no=S15705),

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] gravensteins</a>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

Hey, that was me, only my mother didn't stand up for me.

(Because everyone knows that apples are RED. Nevermind our orchard full of <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Yellow_Transparent.jpg">Yellow Transparent</a>, <a href="http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.asp?item_no=S15705">Northern Spies</a>, <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gravenstein_close-up.JPG"Gravensteins</a> and <a href="http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark/apples/TompkinsCoKing1.jpg">Tompkins Kings</a>, apples are RED.)

There's an interesting bias even in the photos of the varieties I searched above--they always turned out green with a red blush at the most when we grew them, but people seem to have posted the reddest apples they could find to photograph.

[conuly]

Well, damn. I could've sworn the story ended on a happy (ish) note.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that, our WiFi went down and I could neither correct my HTML nor refine my phrasing.

I meant to say only that a very similar event happened to me, not that I was the OP.

[conuly]

Oh.

Well, now I feel really bad. Bad enough to happen once, but twice? That's just... wrong.

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

My (5 of the 6 are applicable here) kids all drew at very different ages and talked at very different ages so it doesn't seem strange to me at all. I've had extremely late talkers (3.5ish) and extremely early drawers (2.5ish.)

As usual it didn't occur to me that other people might have had different experiences.

[conuly]

Was your 2.5 year old drawing at the same level as your average five or six year old? (And was that kid the same as the really late talker?)

Because that's what I'm talking about here. Oh, I wish I had some screenshots to prove my point...!

Though, if that is the case, I'm duly impressed and will add a disclaimer that some people really are that cool.

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

The 2.5 year old was drawing as well as a 4-5 year old before he was 3. None of my other kids drew that well til they were actually 4 or 5. And he wasn't a great talker, on the low end I'd say.

The 3.5 year old late talker is a different kid. He was reading at 2 years though, we now know. (He's the autie of course.)

[conuly]

Okay. Your 2.5 year old is pretty amazing! I'll concede the point - while still saying it's not anywhere near normal enough to justify how often we see it in fiction.

The other one sounds cool too, of course. Why talk if you can read?

[leora.livejournal.com]

I have never been particularly artistic. With teaching and practice I've done some decent things at times, but I'm not especially good at art. We have a few of my early stuff, from when I was about 5. One of them is a drawing of my family. I am fairly sure I had help with it from my kindergarten teacher (at a minimum, I had prompting about what to draw and she labeled each family member with their name (often misspelled, unfortunately as I was too young to know how to spell and not all of my family members have the most common spellings for their names)). Looking at it... well, you can tell they are people. But there's no way to tell which is which. They're not even properly proportional with the tallest ones in my family being tallest. There would be no way to identify them except that I was asked who each one was and the teacher wrote down names. I would have had no idea it was meant to represent my family otherwise. And that was at 5 with direction. I am fairly certain that any drawing I did when I was 3 or younger (and I was talking at 2) would have been amazingly incomprehensible. Part of how I drew in kindergarten was because I had been taught tricks to make recognizable stick figuresque people. Before that... people forget how hard it is to coordinate hand movements to do what you want them to do and to figure out how to combine shapes to make things recognizable. I just didn't know how to. I could picture things in my head, but I had no idea how to make that picture come out on paper.

So, yeah, I wouldn't expect a non-verbal child to draw something clear. Besides, I've faced the awkwardness of trying to tell a child that that is a very nice picture... even though I have no idea what it is a picture of.

[conuly]

Which is another reason I avoid "what a beautiful picture", going instead with "Wow, you used a lot of purple, is that your favorite?" or "Tell me about your picture" or "It sure looks like you had a lot of fun doing this picture/worked hard doing this picture" and things of that nature.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

I dunno...

Topher has turned in frustration to drawing when he doesn't have a word for something. A ractangle with a line across it is juice in a cup (as proven by his approval when he gets it, milk is him saying 'mmmmmmmm'), and lots of little circles are crackers, or occassionally blueberries. Triangles with a line out of the top is a strawberry when he wants those. I definitely prefer it over his previous way of screeching his head off. Taking away Topher's 'handy dandy notebook' is a punishable offence, and Seth knows it.

But then, he's not exactly normal. :-p

[conuly]

1. That's really special in the good sense :)

2. That's also not the type of drawing I mean. I mean really clear artwork. He's a bit early to be doing that sort of thing (and that's so cool), but he's still not drawing, by your description, as neatly and clearly as the kids in these shows and movies.