Our supermarket recently held one of those seasonal drawing competitions that we parents so gladly take an entry for because we say to ourselves, ‘Great, this will buy us about thirty minutes of quiet time while they’re busy working away for the chance to win a prize.’
{Raising all sorts of questions about doing a job not for the satisfaction of completing it in a meritocratic or purposeful sense, but for extrinsic reward because ‘Mummy wants an iPad!!’}
{Except in this case I can’t even remember what the prize was.}
My two, however, sit down for an average of about five minutes before they are done. Usually there’s a bit of random scribbling involved; I’ve no judgement, I remember not giving much of a damn for this sort of thing either as a kid.
Then, the other week, Riley drew this:
And I – in true parental style – think it’s brilliant.
Just LOOK AT THEIR FACES.
When Riley held it up to me, of course, I needed to interpret the text, unpick its semiotic significance in order to properly understand its meaning. In other words, I asked, ‘Why are they looking so… worried?’
‘Because the eggs are high up in the tree.’
‘Oh, fair enough.’
I then asked what the blue around their faces was and I was informed it was to inform the reader what they’d been looking around at. Channeling Charlie Brown, at six! (That happens in Peanuts, doesn’t it? Am I remembering it right?)
Well, I was amused anyway.
