Mind Retrofit

Most children love the arts & crafts time, I remember in grade school, on art day everyone was so happy and excited. I was not, I actually dreaded those days. I did enjoy music day and really got into music class, too much sometimes. On the subject of using any kind of substance that may get on my hands or having to cut things, that makes me uptight and a bit uneasy. My mother is an artist, she paints amazing paintings, she can decorate anything, crafts just flow out of her with ease, she is a seamstress also, and she crochets among a few of her talents.

That was a bit frustrating for me growing up and not to mention having to do these types of things.

I think it is incredible, I love to watch, I do enjoy the outcome of the end master piece but everyone else can do it, not me. I find it to be very stressful, I am not good at it so why would I continue to force myself to try something that just doesn’t flow out of me easily? One time as a teenager my mother was trying to get me to find a hobby, everything she mentioned was of no interest but finally I caved and agreed to make myself a dress. It was the most simple dress you can image, my mother could make it in less than an hour, complete, ironed and everything. It took me something like two weeks I believe.

I did not find it fun in the least bit and I felt like such a failure.

Why couldn’t I do what other girls and women seemed so good at? Why was I unable to flow in the artsy stuff? Why didn’t like doing it? Why did it stress me out and even at times make me cry in frustration? My average grade in art class was a C, I passed through on a thread each year and my teacher couldn’t stand me, I was lucky enough to have her my entire grade school career. I did get an A- once, I made a coil art piece with yarn. We had the choice of making a bowl or something flat, I made a big coiled circle with beige and dark green yarn. I loved it, come to think of it I was making a spinning object and was wrapping the yarn around the coil, I find that soothing. No wonder I enjoyed it and got an A-.

It was something like this.

Now that I have children and home school I have to force myself to do the Arts & Crafts thing.

Ariel loves it, Joshua gets into it for a while, but he is only 3 yrs old so I don’t expect to keep his interest too long, Daniel about 98% of the time wants nothing to do with any of it, I can relate. I do enjoy spending time with my children while doing these things but I seem to rush through to get the end result as quickly as possible. I then find myself hurrying to clean up the mess because it is making me nervous, some days are better than others I can keep myself calm long enough for them to enjoy themselves, however I have to take a break afterward to get myself back in a peaceful state.

I have valid reasons for not liking to do these and I believe they are similar to Daniel’s reason.

Anything to do with cutting, coloring, painting, tearing, writing, stapling and many other things hurt my hands. I have always held my writing instruments the wrong way and I tend to hold them very tight, if I write a lot I get a callous on my ring finger. I already have a permanent one but it gets worse and hurts if I write too much or color. I do not like the feel of color crayons on paper, I have a personal hate of chalk because the thought of it hurts my body, scissors have always been awkward for me to hold and even now I have to use children scissors that are very loose so they flow easily.There are many other issues I could explain but I think you get the picture.

I know it is very important to help my children learn their motor skills and embrace different avenues of creativity.

Since I know how important it is I look for instruments that are made  specifically for Daniel’s needs and press through my own issues with the sounds, feels, smells etc.. Instead of forcing them to do something, like I was forced, if they show no interest in a craft we don’t do it. I take their cues, what interests them? Ariel loves to paint and color and I just let her do it, she makes pictures and draws stories all the time. Because of the freedom I give her she has taken up cutting out her pictures and taping them all around the house, all on her own. She creates things out of paper, different objects and she makes sculptures by tearing paper and glueing them. She does a lot more but I wanted to name a few.

Joshua is a builder.

He loves to stack and build things so I use his gift in the craft area, he also loves to eat so we make food creations and he really enjoys that. Daniel needs, and I am serious, needs to know how things work. If we explain to him how things work then he has interest, so when I explained how the scissors worked and what they do he finally picked them up at Christmas and said “I want to wrap presents”. He began to cut after almost two years of trying to get him to even pick them up. I ask him to draw me circles and once we do that for a while he is willing to try other shapes and sometimes he will do his name for me. He is really into music like me and we both are able to learn a song the first time we hear it and a lot of times we know the words before they sing them, so I am thinking of ways to have that help us with arts & crafts. Any ideas?

I have this feeling inside me that wants the kids to hurry up and get over this stage so they can do it all themselves but I don’t mean that and I know that I need to help them learn these skills. I am trying to have fun with it…trying.