Can he paint a lush Tahitian chick and just be done with it?

Boomerang, You are a wonderful woman. Your love for Mo is on your sleeve. The violence is something that needs attention. Mo probably need professional help to control it. He's been through a lot in his short life. You and Mr. B were the best thing that could have happened to him, but bad things happened that you couldn't protect him from. (I can't imagine what his life would have been like if you hadn't been there.) Some part of Mo feels like he's in this alone, that he can't totally trust anyone. That's the reality. Now he's got to adjust to a whole new experience at school. It's going to be tough, as you've seen. It seems to me that he's doing pretty well, all things considered.

Don't be so hard on yourself, boomer. You're instincts are good. You're doing a great job.

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Boomer--

Thanks for the kind words.

I agree with Swimpy--getting professional help for Mo is an admission of love, not of failure.

Somewhere in his squirrely little brain he equates violence with manhood?...selfhood?...power? You and Mr. B. have done your damnest to dissolve this notion, but Mo still sees violence as a relief for frustration.

Won't the formal adoption make it easier to afford help?

The first Mr. Noddy had a very nasty violent streak and after our divorce my beloved older son began getting into fights. I took him for counseling. There were no miracles, but eventually maturity and common sense and idealism took over.

One of my stepsons--raised by his mother, The Cowbird, had violent tantrums up until the age of thirteen when his peer group indicated that this behavior was childish. The tantrums stopped.

I'm sure the school can help you find an experienced therapist, someone who can help Mo and help you when dealing with Mo.

Remember, he's not supposed to be finished yet.

Hold your dominion.

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Re: Can he paint a lush Tahitian chick and just be done with

boomerang wrote:

I would love to hear from some teachers or others with experience in child raising/education especially in the area of art.

Mo is in kindergarten. Much of the day is spent on art type projects that reinforce what they are working on.

Cool! Yeah?

Uhhh... No.

Apples are green or red. Period.

There are some teachers who you'll never find around these threads, including this fan of blue apples.

~~~~~~~~~

There's been some discussion at the other forum I hang around at of some of the difficulties of starting school. Most of what you've posted about Mo's behaviour recently (including some of the violent outbursts) would fall right into what the parents over there have been discussing in the past month.

Mo's behaviours may at the edge of what you've experienced as a friend/aunt/kid yourownself, but you're not alone as a parent who's trying to cope with new/exacerbated behaviours.

I hope you can find a way to hook up IRL with some other parents who are experiencing the lows and highs of kids starting school.

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I still don't get the detestation of having to aim your pencil within a circumscribed area, and how you can teach all that in other ways.
Surely it is good to learn to fly and good to learn to curb one's hand.
I do get blue apples, am all for them. I was pro blau reiter and fauve before many here. I don't get the disgust for red ones, the principled detestation.

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I once did, long ago, a 4 x 4 foot red apple painting. Should I knock myself off the bridge? Lotta judgement flying around on this stuff.

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Oh, wait, it isn't about art...

Why isn't it?

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I know the thread is about Mo starting school. Just tired of the whoop about not doing red apples.

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I think I'm mostly with you, OssoB.

I've been mulling about this since Boomer first posted. I think there's more than a couple of things going on. One of them is Boomer's artistic sensibility running into the wall of kindergarten hmmmm basic principles. Or at least, basic principles as they're applied in a number of schools.

The others, as I'm teasing them out for myself, seem a bit tetchier.

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Thanks for getting me. I had another sentence to throw out but forgot it already. May be back to amend.

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Yeah, there are oodles of layers to this thread. (Which is part of what makes it interesting.)

I was thinking about the art/ kindergarten=normality aspect the other day because sozlet's at-home art style has changed a bit since she started school. More precise, more "correct." She is doing a lot of self-portraits, with a yellow sun wearing sunglasses and, in the background, a green tree with a brown trunk... this from the gal who, sitting down to draw something, used to be as likely to draw bulbous aliens (who were falling in love) as anything else.

But there are interesting details she's adding, lifelike hands (hands are hard!), proportional necks, all kinds of things. I've decided that she's exploring within these parameters, and that it's a good thing, on the balance. We'll see where it goes.

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I guess what I see the problem as is if the object of the lesson is controling the writing implement why does it matter what color is used for the darn apple.

I mean honestly, aren't there bigger fish to fry?

I started this thread because I was frustrated with myself for teaching Mo the whole "go along to get along" thing.

The school counselor approached me again yesterday noting how proud they were of Mo - he was doing so much better at coloring in the lines.

And that's good.

So.....

Yeah......

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We have stored - I think - some hundred (okay, verified: we got some hundred and stored some dozens) of kindergarten paintings by the two handfull of godchildren, nephews and niese, children of friends.

Trees are mostly only identifiable when we noted that, sometimes by the shape, but surely not be the colour.

That only changes when they go/went to primary school.

The reason, however, might well be that kindergarten here isn't a type of school but a kindergarten. :wink:

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boomerang wrote:

I guess what I see the problem as is if the object of the lesson is controling the writing implement why does it matter what color is used for the darn apple.

I mean honestly, aren't there bigger fish to fry?

I started this thread because I was frustrated with myself for teaching Mo the whole "go along to get along" thing.

The school counselor approached me again yesterday noting how proud they were of Mo - he was doing so much better at coloring in the lines.

And that's good.

So.....

Yeah......

Just bein' nosey here, but do you ever just give Mo colors of some kind and blank paper, and let him have at it? We did that all the time at home. The only criticism we experienced was the insistence to use both sides of the paper. Paper doesn't grow on trees, you know . . . (i swear to god, that's what she said)

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boomerang wrote:

I guess what I see the problem as is if the object of the lesson is controling the writing implement why does it matter what color is used for the darn apple.

I mean honestly, aren't there bigger fish to fry?

I started this thread because I was frustrated with myself for teaching Mo the whole "go along to get along" thing.

Is that what you're teaching him, though? I think that's one of the layers of this thread.

I think it can as easily be that you're teaching him that while school can occasionally seem silly and pointless, there are usually good reasons for why they do things, even if it's not obvious.

One possible reason -- the whole concept of correct and incorrect takes on greater meaning at the kindergarten level. No, cat isn't spelled "qzr." That can be handled in a variety of ways -- my way is to say, "hey, great, you figured out that it's three letters! And you're right, the "q" sound is kind of like the "c" sound." And go from there. But at the end, "cat" is spelled one way, the correct way, and they're there to learn that.

So there are meta-lessons there about correct and incorrect that I see having some value, establishing a background for the other things that are more important. As in, it could easily be closely related to the bigger fish to fry.

Quote:

The school counselor approached me again yesterday noting how proud they were of Mo - he was doing so much better at coloring in the lines.

Cool!

I've definitely definitely noticed that this whole precision thing that I mentioned in sozlet's art is carrying over to her printing. She is printing much, much better than before she started kindergarten.

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Oh yeah - all the time and I do mean ALL the time.

We have piles of paper and just about every kind of art supply you could possibly imagine.

Typically he likes to make what he calls "storm clouds" but lately, inspired by his bike, a Firestorm, he likes to make fire blazey things.

We don't really do project type things (except he is required to draw and sign his own thank you cards) but just leave all the stuff around for whatever, whenever.

I think one of the reasons he finds coloring sheets so boring is because we usually do story pictures. He'll ask me to draw a car wash (a favorite) and then we make up a story about the car wash adding all the details. The paper is usually just a mess of scribbles by the time the story is through because so much is added.

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Cool, Boom . . . i really don't think you need to worry about anal-retentive elementary school teachers for whom all apples are red or green (what happened to yellow?). I'd say he'll do alright, and my personal opinion is that you are doing him good by teaching him to "go along to get along." I'd say, off hand, that he's getting all the freedom of expression he needs at home, and all the opportunity to "just be Mo" in your company.

All, of course, just my never humble opinion . . .

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sozobe wrote:

-- the whole concept of correct and incorrect takes on greater meaning at the kindergarten level. No, cat isn't spelled "qzr." That can be handled in a variety of ways -- my way is to say, "hey, great, you figured out that it's three letters! And you're right, the "q" sound is kind of like the "c" sound." And go from there. But at the end, "cat" is spelled one way, the correct way, and they're there to learn that.

So there are meta-lessons there about correct and incorrect that I see having some value, establishing a background for the other things that are more important. As in, it could easily be closely related to the bigger fish to fry.

Good point, soz. I think kindergarten is the beginning of teaching to the curriculum-based endpoints. If, by the end of kindergarten, kids are expected to have a prescribed set of skills and demonstrate the ability to follow directions, then things like drawing a red apple within the lines as directed can be used to indicate those skills. It doesn't foster an abundance of creativity, but curriculum-based public schools are teaching to prescribed standards and fostering creativity is taking a very distant second place to demonstrating skill sets.

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boomerang wrote:

I think one of the reasons he finds coloring sheets so boring is because we usually do story pictures.

Unfortunately, I think this is the first of many new opportunities to identify things that are boring. This might be where "go along to get along" starts to become valuable. It's coloring sheets this year, it might be math facts or spelling tests next year, but on the boring vs exciting scale I think you'll find many more candidates for boring as the years progress.

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Yep.

By the way, I'm not suggesting that we just kinda shrug and say "well the schools know best" and leave it at that. Obviously, part of our job as parents is to look at this stuff critically, stay involved, and do what we can to improve the school experience for our own kids and for everyone else's.

Just, we know that Mo is having problems with school. I get really worried about what messages are being sent to HIM with all of this anxiety about apples (even if you haven't said anything to him directly). This goes back to what Swimpy said here.

I think that it's definitely your job to be aware, and to think about what the school is doing and how to parent in a way that complements the good stuff and offsets the not-so-good stuff. I just worry that all this angst about apples (or even "go along to get along" as a concept) is not nearly worth the risk of conveying your anxiety about school to Mo -- and kids are super-duper perceptive about this stuff.

Of course it's very possible that you're using this thread to vent and you're not, in fact, conveying that anxiety to Mo -- just wanted to voice that concern of mine.

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Does Thomas the Train have any adventures that start off with boring routine?

For the last two weeks Mr. Noddy has been visiting a family member with MS. Yes, MS is a horrid disease--particularly for a person in his 20's and 30's.

Still, this kid was raised by an adoring and indifferent mother who called him a "Free Spirit" and encouraged him to ignore all the color-in-the-line rules.

He repeated first grade--but remained a Free Spirit. He was bright enough to pick up enough academic material from class sessions and free spirited enough that he never did any homework.

He dropped out of high school in his senior year because he felt so constrained by academic requirements.

He's never held a job.

He was married three times before the age of 30. The first two marriages failed (in part) because of his lack of ambition--although he was pretty good at spending his wives' money--and his inability to keep promises if the promises were at all inconvenient.

MS is an ugly, unfair disease, but this guy has no concept of coping with disaster and living with a handicap. He has no mental or emotional discipline.

I'm not saying that coloring inside the lines prevents MS--or divorce or the disapproval of in-laws. Illustrating ongoing stories is much more exciting than neatly coloring red apples. (Incidently, keep right on with your story pictures at home--home and school are two different places).

Mo likes to excel and the way to excel in school is to color in the lines. Unfortunately in this wicked world, contestants don't set the ground rules. They excel within the ground rules or in spite of the ground rules.

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Can he paint a lush Tahitian chick and just be done with it?

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