Colette, my children are wealthy! They are wanting for NOTHING!!! It
works both ways on each end of the extreme. I do have wonderful
children whose parents teach them values and take them to museums and
get very involved in their lives. You can sure tell the kids whose
parents either have given up trying to fight the peer pressure that
their kids come home with, or else are just too danged busy and let big
sis or bro or the maid raise the kid. I think you will find on the blue
sky white cloud issue that that is pretty typical at a developmental
stage. Kids DO have to be SHOWN beauty, differences, stereotypes,
cliche, triteness, originality, what patience can produce. My new motto
is "Think of taking risks in art as risking for success, not risking
failure." It's on my door. Fear is the enemy, and they need help
seeing that, don't they. But sloth is also an enemy and we just have to
do our darndest to help those lazier and less patient students to see
beauty as an incentive to working harder. Some of them have never had
encouragement. THey are average art work types who don't cause
problems, keep doing their average work, they don't squeak the wheel
when they really should do it to get extra help for growth, and then one
day they give up. It's so hard to keep our heads up and our antennae up
in the artroom for those quiet kids who could achieve so much growth if
they would only ask. We're so busy either putting out fires, or
managing behavior, responding to kids who DO ask, that those kids who
COULD grow and achieve more satisfaction and pride from their work all
of a sudden find themselves giving up to go play with "johnny behavior
prob." because it's more fun!
