6/5/15 - Day 156 - Perfectionist

There's no denying it, Nathan is, like his mother, a perfectionist.  It's both blessing and curse.  I'm trying to teach Nathan how to handle his need for perfection.  Today is the first day of Summer vacation, and I've decided I'd like to try to incorporate at least one "lesson" of some type every day of this vacation (fully realizing that it won't be possible to do EVERY day).

Today I gave Nathan a choice, Piano, History, Art, Literature.  Nathan unsurprisingly selected Art.  I looked through my Pinterest page for an appropriate and not too challenging art lesson.  I settled on a fun looking Georgia O'Keefe lesson that would have us drawing a flower. We looked at Georgia O'Keefe paintings on line and he excitedly kept exclaiming,  "How does she do that?" at many of the paintings.  He was excited for the project.

We sat down with some high quality paper, markers, and our instructions.  We read each instruction and attempted to follow them.  We got about 1/3 of the way through and Nathan had that look.  That frustrated look.  That look he gets when something isn't perfect.  I asked him about it and he broke into tears (something he doesn't do at school in situations like these...no, tears like this are reserved for home).  I tried to figure out what was bothering him, so he finally blurted out that he didn't like what it looked like.  I asked him if he liked how mine looked and he said yes. (Mine did look awesome!)  Then I asked what he didn't like about his.  It was, um, well, difficult is a little bit of an understatement, but we'll go with that.....difficult to figure out that it was because his flower wasn't as symmetrical as he would have liked. 

Insert long conversation about how artists frequently don't like the work that they do, so they start over...and there's nothing wrong with that!  It's a part of learning and a part of the process.  SO we worked on the process a bit more, then a bit more, then a little more...until finally, he figured it out.  PHEW!  The work isn't finished yet (I also explained how artists don't usually complete a work of art in one day...it's okay to finish it later once you get tired of working on it, ) but here is a photo of the work in progress.