I walked into the hallway today to see my 18 month old coloring on the wall. Nothing too shocking there right. But then upon further inspection I saw written in legible handwriting her name...
Now there's only one kid in my house that can write, and that's my seven year old daughter.
At first I thought, what the heck? Why would she abuse her privileges with art supplies like that? She knows better. But then I couldn't get too mad, being an artist and all, I think about drawing on the walls constantly. Lol. I've planned out a wall mural for every room in my house. So, I can see the appeal there. :-)
Still, I couldn't just let my 7 year old think it was cool to color on the walls, she gave the pencil to my toddler and let her go crazy remember. So I asked her to go to her room and write me a letter about why she did it and what consequences there were.
At first she cried about how she didn't know why she did it.. So imagine my surprise when she had finally finished she totally had what I thought was an acceptable excuse!
She had measured Ava's head against the wall, she had seen moms do it on cartoons, and she wanted to see how tall Ava would grow. Awwwwwweeeeee. It was actually kind of sweet. So we had a reminder talk about not coloring on the walls.
Then I let her put up a "How Tall am I?" chart with some of our drawing paper.
So, the moral of the story is, if your kid colors on the wall, don't forget to ask why, you might be pleasantly surprised. :-)