other children draw better than me ... i can't draw, mamiii, please help me !!!!!!!!!!!

[joburg]

DD (6 1/2) came yesterday from school with a Christmas card which was fairly ok done but she was completely unhappy about it. And she knew it was not as good as most of the other classmates did it. Now, truth is, DD is very poor at everything that implies holding a pencil ... drawing, coloring, writing. DD is delayed in many areas, has sensory integration issues, hyperactive (which means a simple coloring activity is more of a torture to her than fun, when she is supposed to color patiently inside the lines). And she is asking me to help her learn ?how to draw?.

My question would be ? is it a good idea to let her trace other children?s drawings? I printed out some of those from the net, hoping she would get ?inspiration? from them ?.. but she just can?t see things, notice shapes, copy them. So then I thought she could just trace them.

Is this going to limit her imagination? An imagination that barely exists anyway ?. Is she going to get more discouraged if she sees other kids work? I only printed out 3-5 yo kids? work, so I won?t intimidate her, but she still can?t get a clue from what they are doing there.

I also tried to encourage her to simply draw whatever she likes. We went through that phase already for the last 1 ½ years but the drawings are just the same. Same ?flying? shapes that are hard to recognize, whether its? a monster, or a girl, or a bird they mostly look the same. No progress. So what more can I do to help her develop?

joburg, has she seen a behavioural optometrist? Are you in SA? If so, I think all optometrists have behavioural training so it shouldn't be difficult for you to find one.

reservejudgement, we are not living in europe. We started with occupational therapy and we were supposed to continue with speech and language therapy but everything here needs to be paied in full (no insurance will cover any of these) so we just stoped for the moment because we can't afford it. So far, i am on my own. This is the reason i ask for whatever tips and trics i can do at home, myself, all alone, just me and DD

my son the same. can't really control a pencil at all. it's hard for a kid to be worst in the class at something.

in case it helps these are the things my son's teacher suggested.

is it to do with inability to concentrate - in which case work on building up concentration slowly.

is it do do with lack of coordination or muscle control... work on the pincer grip to hold a pencil, and on general core body strength with excercises and balancing... lifting arms up, throwing balls overarm, using pegs, crawling, climbing frames etc. lifting a hoop up from the ground and over the head.

No doubt there are other factors I don't know about

my son's occupational therapist suggested just trying to draw or trace very simple straight lines and circles, and joining the dots. yuor dd might be ahead of that!

I can't see tracing other kids drawings will do any harm, so long as dd is happy to do it! everything helps...

Once upon a time, we, kids used to just do things, play, draw, improvise, be kids without anybody telling us HOW to do it. I can't help remebering me as a kid (i still have some of my drawings that my mother, a wise woman! kept them for me, from the age of 3; then I remeber my stone and bone museum i created around the age of 7) playing around and creating fantasitc crazy artworks without anybody applying any special techniques to teaching me how to draw, create, imagine things, fantasize .... maybe i should just let it be ...... let her develop the way she can, if she can ....

Ds seemed to make very little progress on the drawing front for years. Suddenly it has started to click! I think the bit that has clicked is the imagination and seeing representive things on the paper. OK his drawings are very immature for a 10 year old - but they are his own and until recently he did not draw at all. He used to want me to help him - so we often worked together with me trying to get him to engage and imagine. The OT gave us lots of craft things to do to get his fine motor skills working - it had to be things he wanted to do - like making pretend peas and carrots with playdough ( he enjoyed the sensory feedback). For colouring she suggested templates (coloring books with a finished picture to copy) - I do not think ds could imagine the finished picture so needed help at first. To draw you need to be able to imagine and visualise as well as concentrate and control the pencil. Now I can playfully suggest colouring a pirates tee in pink and ds will laugh - clearly able to visualise the result!
I think you are right - let her develop at her own speed - however if you can playfully help the underlying skills along (imagination visualisation) with games or joint art well why not. Ds is enjoying simple stencils at the moment.

DS1 was also very poor at drawing writing etc. We found using a chalk board helpful. + cooking spreading eating. He now touch types everything (age 12)

Oh the other thing was using fat felt tips to colour in - very fast results!

aw. at the weekend dd2 came up and said the other girls were being mean to her because they said she didn't colour, she scribbled.

second the fine motor exercises - lots of pegs, threading etc. can't imagine that copying/ tracing would work if it is a fine motor or concentration issue, sorry...

get the play dough back out - kneading and making things. try fat felt tips as magso says, or triangular pencils or crayons, or try some foam strips around normal pencils/ pencil grips.

dd2 had just started using a keyboard at school - so much difference in her work already.

the coloring part, yeap, i do agree with you, it's a mater of lack of concentration, grip, etc. But when it comes to drawing, DD just can't draw shapes .... that is the big problem we have right now!!!! just drawing! .... a house is supposed to be a square and a triangle on top of it, but DD can't see/ do that .... we also tried stencils, but it's hard for DD to hold them with one hand and use the crayones with another hand, so that's not a thing we can try for now. I am more thinking about letting her develop her own shapes for now, as long as she tries to SEE a bit of resambalnce to the real shapes, like a triangle has 3 sides and a circle is round, the cat's face is round while a flower has round petals, etc. Now how do i teach this? A face is an oval with two dots for eyes and a big curved line under for a smile.

Salt dough with shaped cutters (hearts/ stars etc) might help - you could also make biccys or shortbread using the cutters too which would give her a real sense of achievement. The salt dough she could paint. Not sure if that's any help x

joburg, sorry for being unhelpful earlier. Didn't realise money was an issue. One thing I find useful for developing the ability to identify shapes is a set of parquetry blocks The fact that you can feel the shapes with the hands and then place them in the correct place on the pattern helps to develop the ability to identify different shapes.

i didn't try parquetry blocks with DD but we have many other similar things (maybe too many ) but she looses interest in them after 5 minutes or so, unless i stay there with her every single minute of the time. Just giving her a start with them is not enough. The minute i leave her on her own, she would just quit the whole thing.

I think the problems lies beyond being ABLE to handle the shapes/lines/crayons .... i think it has to do with her lacking imagination .... but how to encourage her to expriment? To let it loose and just do whatever she wants with a piece of paper/play dough/whatever? I tried already (oh, so many times) the 'let's just draw shapes and look what a wanderful piece of art work we did!'

didn't work .... she only seems to repeat things she has done already in school or home with me. She would repeat it endlessly without ever going further than that.