Coloring Outside the Lines

I scheduled this to post today, because today is the day that my shoes are being featured on Jodifur's blog!! This post by Jodifur from last week brought to mind an incident that happened when VC was a four year old in preschool. (I commented about the incident in the comments section of her post and peaked some interest, so I figured I'd post the "offending" coloring job that caused such concern.) Here's the story:


VC attended preschool at a local church. I was also a teacher at the preschool in the next room. One day his teacher approached me to tell me that she was very concerned, because he wasn't COLORING as well as the other kids. She showed me this ornament as "exhibit A":

and pointed out that he had not colored inside the lines. My face immediately flushed, as spontaneously occurs every time I get stressed. (yeah, lucky me) The voice in my head said, "By golly, what a horrible mother! Have you not worked with him on his coloring. hmmm?" Oh, how serious it seemed at the time.

But, how funny it was by the time I got home and realized the lunacy of her remarks. This was a 4 year old and we were talking about his COLORING at a time when he could recite all the planets in order including the number and names of moons of each planet...He even created a song about it! Who knew? What the heck was I doing focusing on helping to build his vocabulary and encouraging his scientific pursuits, when there was COLORING to be done!

VC no longer "colors" so for all I know he may not have progressed much farther than this cheerful ornament that he created when he was 4 -- that I absolutely love!

He is a remarkably creative dude who takes an interest in unordinary things and still remembers the name of Mars' moons: Phobos and Deimos. I can only hope that he continues to color outside the lines. Otherwise I will start to worry..

carma