Scribbling and colouring in

[BertieBotts]

DS is 17 months and has been interested in scribbling for a few months, so the other day I tried letting him have a play with some felt tips on a colouring book.

I was surprised to see that instead of just scribbling all over the page, he would pick out one thing in the picture (it was a rabbit or something) and just scribble on that. Then he picked out another part of the picture and just scribbled in that part. Then he did scribble all over the middle and shortly afterwards, got bored and decided it was more fun to throw the pens on the floor.

I was thinking it might have just been a fluke so I let him do some more drawing today at the children's centre, I drew a few things on the paper for him to look at, some animals that he knows, and again, he scribbled very deliberately on the pictures, rather than just anywhere.

I just wondered if this was normal for his age, because I was expecting him just to scribble indiscriminately for ages yet. What did your toddlers do?

Yes, DS (2) does this too - I was amazed! I think they see 'colouring' not as an opportunity to make an outline have a nice colourful inside, as we think, but to highlight the areas of the picture they find most interesting.

DS recently had a go at a favourite Charlie and Lola book with a purloined biro and I noticed that he'd very carefully scribbled on the faces of his favourite characters, not randomly at all. Also on all the pink milk!

Mine is completely indiscriminate. Yours is either a child prodigy, or perhaps marking the page where there are already marks, or perhaps fond of rabbits? Sounds like a great thing to encourage without applying performance pressure if possible. I long for days spent colouring-in, so I hope yours come early!

Sounds perfectly normal for a child of that age.