A 4-year-old kid, C drew something.
She rushed to me to show it to me while I was attending to something.
She asked, “You see. You see. Colourful hor?”
I looked at the drawing half-heartedly. It was messy. And erm.. Nothing seemed right. But I was only thinking of getting back to what I was doing and so I simply gave her a very casual thumb-up.
Upon seeing my approval, she rushed back to her group of friends proclaiming out loudly, as-a-matter-of-factly and cheerfully, “Nanzi gor gor says it is colourful and nice!”
I heard that of course. I still continue to attend to what I was doing, but I know my mind wondered away… and I was no longer concentrating on what I was doing…
I was thinking…
- What would happen if I were to tell her the truth?
Hey, you really cannot make it leh. You call this a star? Stars got green, blue and red colours one meh? You just look at the proportion of the stars and moon, you must be kidding right? Now, you look at the people you draw, why their hands are of different sizes? Do you know each hand got how many fingers or not? How can the hands be so much bigger than the face? … …
- Is there really nothing in her drawing that was right?
She really put in effort, her best effort. She tried to make things colourful because she must have just learnt (from comments by adults) to associate the adjective “colourful” to "very nice". The concept of proportion may not have set in yet, but certainly the awareness of the co-existence of moon and stars is a plus... ...
In short, we could always look at things in a more positive perspective. I believe my “affirmation” (albeit very casually done) gave her more courage to continue to experiment. I hope I have learned to be more sincere the next time, when attending to kids. And maybe give more constructive guidance, not just affirmative remarks.
What is the point of being so judgmental?
Oh well, there may be a need at certainly point in time, some argued.
Shouldn’t we be more developmental?
I believe we wouldn’t deny this (especially when we are at the receiving-end) . I just hope I wouldn’t forget this in practice. :o)
You see, you see, colourful hor?
I think my style of drawing has been very much influenced by C. Haha..
So are you going to "develop" me? :P
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By the way, I find the following "simple yet so powerful" clip pretty amazing.
"Kiwi!" is an animation about a Kiwi - a type of bird that cannot fly, who spends its whole life working towards achieving his dream … no matter how absurd and seemingly out of reach your dreams are, what's stopping you from achieving them? … read more
4 comments:
C* (the kid) dreamt the impossible... haha.... as C* was able to imagine stars and a crescent moon against a clear blue sky. Maybe C* felt that stars should be out in the daytime since... when humans sleeps few bother to appreciate the stars . Maybe she wants her friends and you to understand her frame of mind better... she is too young to express how she feels :P
That's a pretty nice view point, you have.
By the way, the picture inserted is not a scan of C's drawing.
The picture was done by me. I was merely trying to reproduce a little portion of what I'd seen in her drawing. =)
Well if you wanna see it from another way, you can call C "creative". Who said stars can only be yellow or white? for all your know she could be another piccaso.
We are sometimes too blinded by what is set in our mind, "stars MUST be YELLOW", that murders the "creative" substance in our blood.
What's more why so serious to tell the "truth" to a 4 year old kid who just want to get some encouragement?
=)
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