Cultivating Possibility

Posted by Kimberly | 0 comments

I was alone with my youngest son on a blustery Wednesday, thought we were enjoying a dose of cozy silence until I notice the symptoms of boredom surfacing. Honestly, I assumed that the child’s pure imagination would entertain Søren so that I could tackle another never-ending stacks of work, but soon realized this was selfish, an instance of my taking his creativity and contemplative nature for granted.

“Søren, would you like to do some art?” His eyes smiled.

So I pulled out a book of Expressionist paintings. We turned pages for a while, observing the fast paint strokes—gestures of expression. I listened carefully for long while to Søren’s observations about color, mood, and story. He liked that faces can be blue and yellow and orange, noticed that the weather in our backyard was like Edvard Munch’s Storm.

This wandering led to an idea. I asked Søren if he wanted to create something in the style of these artists? I already knew the answer. It was pleasing on so many levels to pull out my dusty box of printing materials from the supply cupboard. I was happy to walk Søren through the process of making a relief block print.

I’ve tried linoleum with young children with little success because the medium demands a significant degree of fine motor control. Nowadays making a relief block print is much easier because the carving is done on a material more like a plastic eraser. So I got my son started, hovering close by to direct him as needed through all the stages of the process. Søren worked happily for three hours straight drawing, carving, inking, printing… even cleaning up!

I read books on the treadmill. I remember Dennis Prager’s, the one about happiness that reminded me, “Most people do not regularly ask, ‘Will this make happier?’ before engaging in some action. Rather, they do what they do because it feels good at the moment.”

I could have coaxed my son toward independent play, but I want my artistic Søren to have the ability to make choices that will make him deeply happy. Right now my job as his mother, as his mentor, is to help him fill his toolbox with possibility.

Kimberly Bredberg has been a homeschool mom for 16 years and is an advocate for reform in education. Her book, Habits of Being: Artifacts from the Classroom Guild, is forthcoming this spring. She is a founding partner of Blackbird & Company Educational Press and CollectiveBanter.com and is a regular contributor to fourandtwenty.typepad.com as well as being involved in developing an innovative line of curriculum. Her writing and visual art students have received numerous awards including regional and national recognition by the Scholastic Alliance for Arts and Writing and have been published in online and in-print journals. Long ago the California resident, mother of four, received her Bachelor of Arts degree in biological psychology and fine art, graduate training in clinical art therapy, and more recently earned her MFA in creative writing.