Now that it’s cooler weather in most places, the kids may want to stay inside and keep warm.
In my humble opinion, please keep them away from video games, TV and internet surfing.
Instead, gather up some colored paper, crayons, pencils, junk that may be lying around, glue, glitter, boxes you can pick up from a crafts store to decorate and so on and let them go to town! I may not be your typical parent, but my kids were raised without TV or internet. For entertainment, they drew, made up skits and songs and concocted stuff out of my left-over polymer clay.
When my son was 12 he finally beat me into submission and we bought him a “game boy.” So we weren’t total purists. And we did go to see a movie on the weekends fairly often. But even that was after a long hike in the woods!
I still have tons of my two kids’ early art, and one especially glorious water color of a city street scene that my daughter Cedar painted at age 6 hangs in my upstairs bathroom in our New Mexico home. They were artists. My son still is an artist. We lost Cedar at age 20 due to a congenital heart condition. But up to her passing, she wrote, danced, drew beautifully and was a sensitive and profoundly talented actress.
This is one of the things I feel most passionate about…that we are all artists to one degree or another, and should be allowed and encouraged to create starting in very young childhood.
Encourage your kids and grand kids to expand those butterfly wings and experience the joy that comes from building something out of nothing. A blank sheet of paper can become a stunning line drawing, a young girl can learn to use her body to perform graceful arabesques, thoughts become poems become songs.
With purpose and encouragement, our kids and grand kids can become whatever it is they set their own sights on.
As an added suggestion, please keep your kids away from mental labeling (ADD, ADHD, OCD, and the psychiatric drugging that is most often part and parcel of these diagnoses) I myself would have been most definitely labeled hyperactive were I born in a later decade. I am so lucky I was not.
For whatever my advice may be worth, I encourage you to listen to your heart. Give your kids hugs, good meals, encouragement and things to make stuff with.
And indulge your inner artist! Who has created something recently they were especially proud of? Please tell me about it here!
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