To Colour Or Not To Colour?

When children first start to draw, we teach them to colour in between the lines. We reward accuracy rather than interpretation. Neatness, not expression. This says a lot about our own predispositions.

The problem with kids’ colouring is also that often their elders guide them not to use certain colours for certain objects and come to teach them that they have to colour skies in blue and not in green or red for example.

Last few years the publishers sought it also right to print colouring books for adults where they now also have to feel the restriction to colour between the lines.

Perhaps fine motor skills may be trained by colouring between the lines, but it does not give so much freedom to self-expression, and that is much more important to stimulate.

We even interfere with ” to hold a crayon correctly” as if we do know the best way to hold a pencil or pen. (This reminds me how we as children got a tick on our hands when we dared to write or draw with our left hand.)
How many of us did not get directives on how to fill in a blank piece of paper. Some of us got to learn we always had to keep a white border and should not have the drawing pass the paper.

We should give all children the liberty to express themselves freely. Why not present the sky to be green, mauve and not blue, the grass being red and not green, clouds being blue or orange?

Many people are so ingrained in calibrated settings and dare not allow ideas other than those as we perceive things in real life.

+++

Related

• Stop Conforming – Day 302 of 365 Days to a Better You

 

justabitfurther

The past few days at the start of 2022 has reminded me, that “putting away the crayon box and/or colouring between the lines” may actually be the most devastating move I could make at the moment. A strange opening, but hang in there with me.

Generally, most of us would agree that rules are necessary in a wide expanse of situations. You know – “stop at a red light”; “wear a life jacket when canoeing”; and the oldie but goodie “don’t eat yellow snow.” You get the idea.

Rules(real and imagined) can be a good thing, but they can also be the most restricting and strangling when it comes to who we are and should be as an individual.

Often family, society and/or our upbringing force; slot or “passive-agressively suggest” this is how we “should be or act or live our OWN lives.”

Conformity has it’s place. But, it…

View original post 1,043 more words