Process, Not Progress: What My Preschooler Taught Me About Art

“Painting is not fun.” These were words exclaimed in exasperation, a response to my insisting that we paint this morning. Okay, every morning. It was a wake-up call. I had committed the mortal sin of art with kids:

I had been focusing on the product of creation rather than the process of creation.

In my defense, I had only made what I thought were casual suggestions: “Why don’t we paint this leaf that you found?” or “Why don’t you paint something that makes you happy?” Open-ended enough, I thought. But, even in those statements there was a hidden clause: we had to make something.

It was the unspoken “something” that had hung in the air over our last few art sessions. A shapeless mold that her work had to fit into; shapeless, but a mold nonetheless. One time, as was my habit, I’d asked her what she was drawing. She answered, “Please don’t ask me, Mommy.” Maybe she herself had not decided yet.

Art with kids is about the process. The act of dipping your fingers in the paint is just as important—or even more important — than the marks the paint leaves of the paper. If not a single drop of color makes it to the paper (instead ending up on arms and legs, cheeks and noses), it is still a successful artistic exploration.

What a foreign concept to us grownups. Our entire adult (and maybe all our schooled) life has been about producing, producing, producing. The new mantra now, of course is, practice makes progress. But even that presumes that at the end of the practice session you will have something to show for it.

In an NPR interview with Erika Christakis, author of The Importance of Being Little, she says,

A lot of the time, as parents, we are trained to expect products, cute projects. And I like to say that the role of art in preschool or kindergarten curriculum should be to make meaning, not necessarily things. But it’s hard to get parents to buy into this idea that their kids may not come home with the refrigerator art because maybe they spent a week messing around in the mud. (Emphasis mine. Read the rest of the interview here.)

In my own artistic explorations, one of my mantras is “practice makes progress.” As a hyper-critical ex-perfectionist, it’s already a big step for me to seek “progress, not perfection.” I look at my work and see where the strokes have gotten smoother, the color choices more confident, or even the practice more regular. But maybe I need to take it even a step back for my kids: to not view their work looking for signs of progress. There is hidden judgment in the words we choose to say. “I like the colors you used today,” I’d say, or “Wow, that looks like a tree” (meaning, it looks more like a tree than the “tree” you did yesterday).

Common wisdom says “Display your kids art! Show them you’re proud of them! Put their best efforts on the wall!” But what of the efforts that are less than their best: a cat that becomes a dinosaur that becomes an expanding black hole in an effort to start over, a dot on a paper made in an experiment to see what a fingertip looks like when covered in ink, a shape that is unlike any shape ever named. These don’t go on the wall, but does that make them less worthy of praise, pride, or satisfaction? Do we need to be proud of all our work? Is the work not worth doing if it doesn’t make us feel something? Or if all we feel after is tired, was the morning wasted, the practice pointless?

Or, perhaps, the spirit of the act is enough, regardless of your art — or your age.

Reclaiming the Process and Making Art Fun Again

I set up the paints and poured the water on them. Not in careful dabs with a brush — we made shallow pools of rainbow colors.

“Mommy, you’re making a mess,” she said, giggling.

“Today, that’s the only thing we have to make.”

We used the good envelopes. I had been saving them for a special day (for 8 years!), but perhaps in using them, this ordinary day would become more special.

We used the sticks we’d collected from our morning walk. I used mine one way. She used hers another. I tried not to teach her how to dip the tip in the paint to get “the best results.” She watched without a word; I watched her copy me. Unsatisfied, she tried another way, breaking her stick in half then using both ends dipped in different colors. I liked her way better.

We used our fingers. Then our fingertips. Then our hands.

She led, I followed. She showed me how to splatter, how to smudge, how to spread, how to splotch.

I showed her that Mommy can be teachable.

In the end, we did make something. We couldn’t help it: we are makers. Out of the mess came some beautiful work and, yes, I will display them proudly.

But, she was off and running after she’d washed and dried her hands. Once the paper left the table to be dried, she was unconcerned with whether they ended up in the bin or the museum. I guess for her the something she’d made was space and time just for her and me. “I’m happy you’re here; I’m glad we did this, Mommy.” A thought worth framing.

(Excerpt from and originally posted on The Life Enthusiastic, where I write about life with art, life with kids, art with kids, and other such cross-pollinations. Would you recommend that I post more, here? I’d love to know.)