How do I get him to stop/understand - drawing on walls.

[Antdamm]

This is probably a stupid thing to ask, but I need advice/help/stiff drink

My son is 3 (will be four in august). About 6 months ago, he drew on the walls of his bedroom (in crayon). I know its to be expected if you leave him with drawing implements in his bedroom, but we live in rented accommodation and after trying various tricks to get it off - in the end we had to repaint the whole room. The next day he drew on the walls in the hall - more painting.

So, to deter him from having the temptation to draw on more walls, we removed all the pens, pencils, crayons etc from his bedroom and put them in a 'craft box' which could only be taken out and used under our supervision. We talked to him, and explained that drawing on walls was bad and how you were only supposed to use crayons etc on paper. So, since then things have been fine. He would come and ask to use pens to draw pictures etc and he would only draw on paper.

He will be starting school in September, and he needs to learn how to write his name so we gave him back a few pencils and some paper to get him practicing. We also bought him jotters so he could practice writing within the lines - and he was getting really good at it. We bought him a drawing board with chalk etc - to help him too. So he wasn't short on things to draw on.

After putting DS to his bed last night and going into our main bathroom, I have discovered that he has drawn on the windowsills in there and on the windows. Then I went into our bedroom and found he has drawn on my exercise ball and our tv. Upon further inspection in his bedroom, we find he has drawn on his own windowsills, walls, drawers and the carpet and his cupboards. He did it all in a couple of hours! He had taken one of DP's disk writing pens (supposedly permanent - So it is proving quite difficult to remove.) from his bag and has used that when he was supposed to be in his bed.

I know he is only three, but he seems to understand that many other things are wrong and that he shouldn't do them, so why is he still writing on walls?

DP thinks his punishment should be to clean the pen off his own windowsill. He also wanted to smack his bum for it, but I didn't think that it would do any good, so we decided against it.

What do I do? I am at my wits end.

Sorry for long post, thanks for reading

Agree he should try to help clean some of it off.

smacking bum - ridiculous, glad you decided not to!

I think you already had the answer - he needs to be supervised with any drawing implement.

forget learning his name before school etc; he doesn't 'need' to learn this before school. Does he go to any sort of nursery or pre-school? they will be doing this with him anyway if so. If not, don't stress, he's only 3, he SO does not 'need' to write his name! That is what reception is all about. Preparation for school. We don't need to do preparation for preparation, imho!!!

How about giving him one of those 'draw with water' mats? Do you know what I mean?

yes, go for an aquadraw for unsupervised times, otherwise keep crayons away until he understands!

(all so easy to say, DS is only 20mo and can't figure out the child locks yet.

Yeah he does have an aqua draw mat thing, will look in cupboards.

As for writing his name - he does need to learn how to do it here. They say he should be able to write out his first name and should be able to recognise his surname before he starts school.

Thanks for your responses. Will get back into the swing of the 'craft box' and permission required.

Thanks again

where are you?

the official line for yr r is to be able to recognise your first name (so that you know which peg/ drawer is yours)

anyways, supervision is the way to go. mine are 9,7,5 and we have only just relaxed the iron grip on the pens box lol.

(dd1 is the only one who has ever written on the wall - she found a pencil and wrote her name, at about the same age, and then blamed ds1, who is two years younger and could barely hold a pencil.)

he'll learn to write his name just as well supervised as he will unsupervised lol.

aquadraw are pretty cool though... until they can work out how to open the pens and leave the taps running and the plugs in when they are filling them up...

oh, yes, that's supervision as well lol

We are in Ireland.
Apparently all the kids who go to nursery here learn to write their name in the first six weeks of going and they move onto all other letters of the alphabet. Some of the schools say that the child needs to be able to write fist and last name. Thankfully DS' name is nice and short - John, so he can write it no bother. He prefers to do it on his own and then come and show it to us when he has finished.

Have been around entire house, picking up any pens, pencils etc I find and they are all going in the 'craft box' which is going back inside the cupboard

Thanks

this has happened to us tonight. dd (4) has drawn over her bedroom wall, other dd's cot, everywhere. she has aqua draw but it has nto stopped her. at least i'm not alone.