Fun with arts and crafts
Sep. 5th, 2011 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dreamLast month I read a magazine about making art with your kids - *Create with Me* by Somerset Studio - and it quite upset me. I think this is because I find making art with Pearl quite stressful. It’s one of the things that, before I had a kid, I used to dream about doing but it’s definitely one of the few things where the reality has not lived up to the expectation.
I have thought about why this is - I think there are two reasons. One is that I do craft to relax so I find it stressful to be supervising her as I do it and constantly saying ‘please don’t waste that material/break that device, because it cost Mummy a lot of money’ and ‘please don’t glue that to Mummy’s art because Mummy is doing her own work and you are doing your own work’.
The other thing is that Pearl often doesn’t like doing craft. She resists doing those things that require stronger hands, like using scissors and drawing.
I have reached the conclusion that I will just have to view her craft and art activities as a form of OT that I have to get her through with as much pleasure as possible. (Rather than the dream I had of us basically working side by side, expressing ourselves in art, as I had dreamed.)
The other day I cunningly got her to use her squeezing hands by giving her glitter paint. She was really struggling and then I turned around and she had squeezed out tons of paint... and then I saw that she had decided that the easiest way to do it was to put the tube in her mouth and use her jaw muscles. Clever though not what I had had in mind.
If I were feeling more cheerful I would think that this shows how she always finds a way. I remember her using a stick to poke a button on a toy when she was about 15 months old. She couldn’t make it work with her fingers but she was determined to get it to play music.
But I am not feeling up-beat. Instead I just feel so overwhelmed. I hate taking her to physio/OT at the moment because she runs away from the table every time the craft activities come out. They try to make the OT fun but she still runs off and has to be cajoled back. I know she does not like it because it hurts her and because she can never decide which is her doing hand and which is her helping hand. (On the advice of the OT, I am now enforcing the right as the doer and the left as the helper. We have a family history of ambidextrousness which makes me dread her school experiences.)
I hate making her do things that hurt her. But I have to because she has got to be able to write. She’s absolutely going to have to do that. As soon as she gets her kindergarten class assignment I plan to talk to the teacher and go over some of this background but I do worry about her being in a class where all the other kids will have the ability to do this stuff.
I have thought about why this is - I think there are two reasons. One is that I do craft to relax so I find it stressful to be supervising her as I do it and constantly saying ‘please don’t waste that material/break that device, because it cost Mummy a lot of money’ and ‘please don’t glue that to Mummy’s art because Mummy is doing her own work and you are doing your own work’.
The other thing is that Pearl often doesn’t like doing craft. She resists doing those things that require stronger hands, like using scissors and drawing.
I have reached the conclusion that I will just have to view her craft and art activities as a form of OT that I have to get her through with as much pleasure as possible. (Rather than the dream I had of us basically working side by side, expressing ourselves in art, as I had dreamed.)
The other day I cunningly got her to use her squeezing hands by giving her glitter paint. She was really struggling and then I turned around and she had squeezed out tons of paint... and then I saw that she had decided that the easiest way to do it was to put the tube in her mouth and use her jaw muscles. Clever though not what I had had in mind.
If I were feeling more cheerful I would think that this shows how she always finds a way. I remember her using a stick to poke a button on a toy when she was about 15 months old. She couldn’t make it work with her fingers but she was determined to get it to play music.
But I am not feeling up-beat. Instead I just feel so overwhelmed. I hate taking her to physio/OT at the moment because she runs away from the table every time the craft activities come out. They try to make the OT fun but she still runs off and has to be cajoled back. I know she does not like it because it hurts her and because she can never decide which is her doing hand and which is her helping hand. (On the advice of the OT, I am now enforcing the right as the doer and the left as the helper. We have a family history of ambidextrousness which makes me dread her school experiences.)
I hate making her do things that hurt her. But I have to because she has got to be able to write. She’s absolutely going to have to do that. As soon as she gets her kindergarten class assignment I plan to talk to the teacher and go over some of this background but I do worry about her being in a class where all the other kids will have the ability to do this stuff.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 02:37 pm (UTC)