Hi! These posts are not dated and your toddler may be a teen by now but I wanted to share anyway. My son and I have always loved drawing together, he’d draw freely up until age 3, houses, people etc…he’d also love what I drew, cut it out, play with it, etc..but between 3 and 3 3/4 he stopped drawing figuratively altogether, asking me to do it. So one day I just told him: I love when you draw and I love your drawings so much and I want to try something new. I can see your belief-in-yourself-levels for drawing are a bit low, and I think it’s because I’ve been drawing so much and you don’t think your drawings are good when you see mine. I draw well because I’ve had 32 years of practice, and you draw just like me or even better when you’re big. So to get your confidence levels for drawing up I am going to stop drawing for a while and just be with you while you draw.
And he didn’t like that much at first but then he started an explosion of drawing a day later. He still likes to draw the things I would draw (sewage systems with poops boating around etc and asks me to draw the toilet “properly.” WhenI first refused gently he started to cry and it seemed like he was going to stop drawing so to not discourage him I suggested we do it together by holding the same felt tip. Once that bridge was crossed he continued drawing again. Sometimes he makes his greatest drawings when I’m not looking and doesn’t show them to me, other times he does.. When I feel he is confident I will draw with him because we just have so much fun dreaming up these worlds on paper together and we make such fun memories while doing so and are really in tune and in flow..but then sometimes when I sense the low self esteem rearing its head I take another step back. I find it hard to stop something so bonding. But I need to do it for him to break free sometimes…

I totally am on board with this, and do try to literally sit on my hands at times! My question is, what if your child is very interested in drawing and asks how you draw x? So far I’ve drawn it and said, “that’s how I’d draw x, do you want to show me how you’d do it?”. I’ve found my nearly 4year old daughter then does a slightly different version (usually more accurate than mine!). I do sometimes also see if she can find a picture in a book to remind her how x looks. Is this OK and still supporting creativity or should I be encouraging her to try herself first?

I draw with my child, and try as much as possible not to draw for him. He had a phase of requesting (i think due to his grandparents way of drawing for him every time and trying to instruct as they went..), I would just get out a different media for a while, something more abstract, so that if he made a request i could do something that he may not recognize as what he asked for, and just encourage experimentation. After a short time he went back to being able to draw his own thing while i draw too.

it would be impossible to not do art in front of my children, it is a part of my life, so they’re going to see it – no different than them seeing me cooking dinner

Roule, I agree with you. One thing this article assumes is that children will know that the adult’s drawing is ‘better’ and will feel discouraged by that. That does happen sometimes, esp as children get to school age, but it’s often not the case! In my experience as a babysitter, young children often like their drawings more than mine (and often theirs really were amazing in ways I can also appreciate!). We enjoy drawing together and showing each other what we’ve done. Sometimes we even make pictures together.

Once on the subway, I saw something that bummed me out. A dad was drawing in his art journal while his young preschooler watched. When the child asked for a turn to draw in the journal, the father acted insulted and finally found a page in the back (which he undoubtedly later tore out).

I think what we need to get rid of is the idea that an adult with more developed motor skills is a ‘better’ artist than a child. That’s the great thing about art — there are lots of ways to be good, not just making perfect outlines.