Writer's Workshop: Keep it Clean!

This is a perfect day; this has been on my mind to write, and it fits perfectly into Mama Kat's third prompt for Writer's Workshop this week;

3.) Describe a time you allowed your child to do something that you normally would not let slide.

I work in my son's co-op preschool classroom once a month or so, and Tuesday was my last day as "lead", which means two things, 1) I cherished this last little nugget of time being his "teacher" and observing how he interacts with the other toddlers, and 2) I'm FREE, FREE, FREE and FREE for the rest of this session. Next Fall, he'll go to a 'traditional' 2's program, no co-oping.

We Moms do the curriculum, and the suggested craft activity for this, my teaching Tuesday, was fingerpainting! "Oh, crap," I thought as I read the suggestion to get out the smocks, the finger paints, and have each very busy, very unsteady set of toddler fingers paint a Rainbow.

"Go for it," said the unaffected, will-be-far-away-at-work husband, with a grin.

Always the under overachiever, I announced to the permanent teacher my intention for the craft that day. She gave me a long look. Then, as if resigning herself to not roll her eyes, got out the table cover, smocks, large sheets of paper. We started with 2-3 kids at a time, quickly whittling it down to 2, while the other Mom watched the balance of the kids.

The result amazed me. Each kid was tentative, at best, to the idea of smushing his/her hands into some kind of paint, and getting messy! Before my disbelieving eyes, each child reluctantly dipped one finger, or two, into the gloppy paint, then delicately put the finger to paper and wiped it around a bit, as if to rid the clean finger of said gloppiness. We encouraged, we incented, we even demonstrated. My own mess-loving toddler took a moment to verify I was "okay" with his fingers (and subsequently, clothes) getting completely bamboozled with bright red, yellow, blue and green.

Once they understood that this kind of atrocious messying-up of their fingers was allowed, they got into it. Really into it. The youngest one, at only 14 months, wouldn't STOP once he got going, and kept sneaking back over to our half of the classroom to begin getting brightly colored again. With joy, I saw my own toddler's independent use of the "handprint" style.

But...One child in particular wouldn't do it. He was the oldest, at 2.5 years, and said, "No, Thank you," when told it was his turn to make a picture. We sat him down and convinced him that Mommy might truly enjoy a picture, or at least a little handprint. He dipped one finger, no more, and slide it across the paper to get it off. When he was done 4.5 seconds later, he popped up, hands straight out in front of himself so as to not touch anything, to get his hands washed. His face, clothes and psyche stayed relatively unmarked. Well, I can't vouch for his psyche.

The thing is, kids are supposed to get messy. And we, as parents, are supposed to clean them up. But I saw first hand how much they have been trained, encouraged, educated, prompted and threatened, to stay clean at all costs! We wash their hands to prevent germs. We wash hands after coming in from outside. Touching someone else's toys. Sneezing. Petting the dogs. Farm animals. Our own butts.

I'm the worst offending OCD-Mom there is. I wash my hands just after I've washed them. The point is.. how much are we stifling our kids' creativity? By just... keeping them clean, at all costs?

Now. If you'll excuse me. I need to finish scrubbing the dirt out from under the dog's paws.