One of the miracles of children is they have not learned they have limits or inabilities. When I was in the third grade my teacher, Mrs. Rizzo had all of us draw pictures on Friday afternoons. One day I was drawing a race car when she came up behind me and said, “What’s this?”
“My race car,” I answered proudly.
“Girls don’t drive cars.” she admonished.
I looked at my car and then I looked at her and thought, she’s my teacher, she must know better than I do. And I stopped drawing. In fact I never drew another thing. What I heard was “girls don’t draw.”
In fact, I didn’t draw anything until I was 40. I had to kill some time one Sunday morning and took out the art pencils paper and I started to draw a dinosaur. It actually turned out to be fairly decent, not something worth framing, but it was definitely recognizable as a dragon. I actually wasn’t bad for a first attempt after 30 years.
I know there are too many children who are told they “can’t” when their parents should be telling them to try it, whether it is drawing, singing, playing an instrument or going to a computer camp.
Children need to be encouraged, nurtured and supported to grow into creative well rounded adults.