You did good! But in a bad way....

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Youngest does not draw. When given paper, so he can do "homework" alongside his big brother, he either scribbles random squiggles, or asks me to draw things for him. Never have I seen him draw anything that looked even slightly representational.

His mom calls me today. "Guess what your son did?"

I'd picked up some cheap plastic drawer sets from Rite Aid, and put them in a corner of the kitchen until we figured out where we were going to use them. Youngest snuck into the kitchen, found a dry-erase marker on the refrigerator, and drew on the drawers.

Two stick figures, perfectly clear. One labeled with a shaky but legible 8, for his 8 year old brother, the other labeled with a 4, his own age.

Dry-erase marker can easily be wiped off of plastic, so it's not an issue this time...but it's hard to balance the effusive praise for the drawing with the admonition that he's not supposed to draw on anything other than paper...

Last edited by Rolzup on 21 Sep 2012, 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You could try getting him a dry erase board....but yeah I suppose you'll have to inform him he cannot draw on walls or rite aid containers.

Thats great he drew!! !...... all kids display some of their first/best works of art in inappropriate places:)

I hope you got a picture of that:) Frame it and put it up on the wall!! I did that with my daughter's first paintings and they look so wonderful framed in nice frames:)

That's awesome!! Our walls are covered with scribbles.

I'm in my early 50s, and your 4 year old kid is already drawing better than I can!

Thats great, sort of!
You could get some black board paint and let paint an area of wall for him to chalk on, that way even if it gets on somethign else the chalk will rub off easily? Or I use rolls of wall paper lining to cover a whole table and let my daughter draw all over it. PErhaps he would like somewhere he can draw thats always out and available to use so if he does feel like drawing without anyone trying to make him draw he can just wander off and do it!

Is your 4 yo AS? My AS kid shared with me when he was 8, that he has sensory issues when writing/drawing with a pencil on paper, the sound of the lead scratching on the paper irritated him. (Getting the teacher to accept assignment in pen helped). So maybe he just needs drawing materials with a better feel and sound to them.

My first thought was that he drew on the drawers because the drawing had a purpose and a function. Drawing on paper for "no real reason" makes no sense. Give him signs to make, and stick them up. Think of him as your own little label maker. Make the drawing on paper purposeful. .

^^This was what I was thinking when I read this thread. I always hated pencils for most part.

dry erase markers >> markers >> pens >> crayons >> chalk >> pencils

at least for me when I was a kid.

Thats really interesting, because my son said something about this the other day. He kept getting up and changing pencils while doing his homework. Then finally looked at the latest pencil and said "stop squeaking" in a very frustrated voice. Unfortunately, I laughed. But he forgave me and explained that he hated the sound of pencils on paper and sometimes it was worse than other times, and sometimes changing out the pencil helped.

The language that seems to help around here in similar situations is:

"That drawing is really awesome! I love how you used numbers to show that one is you and one is your brother. Very clever and creative. You know what would make it even better next time? If you did it on paper! Drawings on paper make me even more proud and happy!"

Don't know that it would work with all kids, but it worked wonders with my son when he was little because he was such a pleaser by nature.