Art Class?

Here is some more from those musings of mine that I found. I really needed to find this stuff!

The inability of us as parents to manipulate our children's feelings is tiresome. It is probably the most difficult thing for us to deal with. Children know what they want and that they should feel good now. Sometimes we are just to tired to help them get there on their own and we just want them to obey or just be easy.


My daughter loves art. There are days (alright, its actually everyday and now you can picture how messy things can get around here) when the floor is completely full of cut papers, glue, markers, paint, crayons, tape and who knows what else. We live in a town that is big into art so at our community arts center I signed her up for a class called Draw, Paint and Create. When she heard the name and I asked her if she wanted to go she started screaming and running around she was so excited. I told her I wouldn't be in the room with her and she said that was okay.

Well the class starts today and yesterday we were all on the Iris roller coaster. Yes I want to go, No I don't want to go, well maybe, then NO, NO, NO. I guess we could have just made her choose one and stick to it no matter what, but that is not our style.
Instead I used it as an opportunity to talk about her feelings and what she thought would happen. I told her that if she did want to try it, then anytime she was nervous then she should just think in her head "I am safe, this class is fun." But if she didn't want to go she didn't have to and if she wanted to try it and leave partway through that was fine too.
Later in the afternoon, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face and said "I'm feeling really good about my class tomorrow, I'm having really good thoughts about it now."

I figure no matter what happens with her class, at least I know I learned something and I think she did too.