Is your preschooler an artist?
Tonight my daughter sat at the dining room table painting. She was mixing colors. She said that she was trying to make gold. Since she was dumping all of the colors into a big container and stirring, I can only assume that she meant brown, which is exactly what she made. Pressing blobs of paint onto green paper, she looked proud and said, “An artist takes care in her work.” Then she presented her father with her paintings as a birthday present.
I wish that I had such confidence. At the moment I am taking singing lessons, and it’s going very well. However, I’m having to unlearn all of the many years of singing incorrectly. It’s not that I don’t sing well now. I can carry a tune. However, last year I damaged my voice and so I want to learn how to use it properly. It’s surprising how much effort adults can put into disguising their true singing voice. I hope that in a few months my true singing voice will emerge more completely and I will be able to sing well and have a healthier voice.
When I asked my singing teacher whether all adults go through this process, she said yes. Children have the ability to sing with abandon. Just as they make art without a thought to whether it is beautiful in someone else’s eyes, children sing in a voice that is sometimes out of tune but is always natural and healthy. It’s only as we grow up that we avoid the things that we aren’t good at or learn how to disguise them.
Four-year-old confidence can be grand sometimes. We can learn a lot from four-year-olds: how to make art without a care, how to sing with joy.
What have you learned from your four-year-old?
(Photo courtesy of iprole at stock exchange)