This Sunday Luka asked me – “Dad, what should we do”. As we haven’t sketched anything in a long time I suggested – “Let’s draw something”. So, he said yes.
We started to draw and we started sketching an aquarium. He draws himself standing close to it, an octopus, sea grass and a fish. But the fish was strange (without a tail and looked more like a circle) so I said to him “Luka, look, the fish is ok but I think you can draw it even better. Let’s try to draw it again so we can see if we can make it look even better.”
Anyways, Luka started to be unhappy with my answer and eventually started crying. I waited for him to calm down a bit, and then I usually ask him to sit in my lap. I started explaining him silently that his fish was good, but that there were some usual parts missing like a tail.
He was still watching me when I took a pencil and a paper and started to draw myself. I said – “Here is how you can draw it” – while I was doing it. Luka then said “I can’t do it” but I was more like “You should try it. Come on, try it.”.
He started to draw, unwillingly. But then he stopped again – “I don’t know how to draw a fish.”
Again, I took the paper and started laughing. “Let’s try to draw a silly fish”, I say, while I started drawing a fish that doesn’t look like a fish at all, but more like a circle. I drew very small lips, big eyes and small, almost invisible tail.
Luka was laughing by my side.
Then I drew a “dragon-fish”. A fish with the wings of a dragon and a dragon tail.
Luka took a pencil and started to draw again. I gave him a task to draw three silly fishes. He was drawing and drawing.
After a while, he showed me his drawing. He painted three silly fishes. I liked them. I said to him that I like them a lot. I said that I liked how creative he was.
In the end, I asked him if he was happy that he drew a fish and he said – “Yes, I’m very happy. Thank you for showing me how to draw a fish.”
And I answered: “I will always show you how to do anything. I know that sometimes it is hard and scary to do something for the first time. To try something new because new things can sure look scary in the beginning. But I’m always here for you to teach you how to do it, and to do it with you so it wouldn’t look scary.”
He gave the hardest hug in the world.
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Featured photo by russn_fckr on Unsplash
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