Comments on: Town Colouring Page

By: Pauline

Pauline — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:47:27 +0000

Hi Belinda,

What great news! So glad to hear your guy had so much fun with painting on canvas. xoxo P

By: Belinda

Belinda — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:52:01 +0000

Hi Pauline,
After all that I had a big success yesterday – we painted 2 big canvases by squeezing tubes of paint directly on to the canvas and then squishing the paint around with brushes. He loved it! Spent half an hour deeply engrossed in the paint and the process. Will definitely keep in mind the recommendation about assessment, but maybe we\’ve hit on something that has sparked an interest in exploring painting in more depth.
Kids… just as you think you know them they go and change on you!!!
Thanks for the wise words.
Cheers

By: Pauline

Pauline — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 03:10:10 +0000

I love meeting my readers and getting to know them. Thank you so much for striking up a conversation

You don’t sound at all like a paranoid Mum Belinda. A good high school friend of mine is a paediatrician. My twins were very, very late speakers. I told her that I wasn’t that worried about it, but still… I wasn’t sure. Her best piece of advice to me was to get them assessed. They had nothing to lose by getting assessed. If they didn’t need the extra support, that’s fine. If they do need extra support, it’s best to get onto it early on as early intervention is key.

xoxo P

By: Belinda

Belinda — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:30:03 +0000

Hi Pauline,
Great to read your detailed reply, thank you!
Hopefully I don’t sound like a paranoid Mum as I’m sure in time he will be fine, but it’s the first time I’ve seen specific descriptions of capabilities for near his age bracket and I was quite surprised at how ‘accurate’ an ‘average’ child should be. I’m mainly concerned about his fine motor skills (I’d love it if he was more interested in painting for fun, but if he’s not then that’s fine, he has lots of other things he loves instead.) He does get some fine motor skills with duplo, lego, sandplay, etc but I’m unsure if this is the same as holding a brush or pencil for a sustained period. I know he’s only 3.5 and the article is for slightly older children, but I guess my Mum’s instinct has been mulling this over for a little while, and your blog post got me motivated. Also, recently I’ve noticed that some other kids/friends at his age are able to draw suns, grass, hearts and clouds (messy ones but they can be recognised) and there is no way that he would be able to do this. He has recently started to enjoy cutting up paper with scissors, so that’s been a good activity we’ve discovered together.
I’ll keep offering the paints, textas and crayons and hopefully one day he’ll suddenly find something interesting that captures his imagination and then we’ll be off and away!
Thanks again for your advice, it’s very much appreciated.