Did your child just ruin their artwork?

Have you ever had the experience of watching your toddler make art, and then all of a sudden they start covering up everything they drew?

Your first response may be, “No, no, no, you’re gonna ruin it!”

Pause. I am gonna blow your mind right now.

Your child is not ruining their painting and here’s why.

There is a fascinating concept in early childhood, and I’m not going to science this out for you, I’m just gonna give you the quick mom version: It is called a schema.

These include covering things, uncovering things, wrapping things, dropping things, transferring things. It’s developmentally appropriate for your toddler to explore, and maybe even become obsessed with for a time, all of their schemas throughout toddlerhood.

If you see your child throwing something off of the high chair, that’s a schema.

If you have a child who loves baby dolls and they’re constantly wrapping the baby doll in their toy crib, that’s a schema.

If they’re taking the baby doll from the crib to the high chair and back and forth and back and forth, that’s a schema.

All of these concepts feel like phenomenon to little kids and it’s a sign that they are actually developing appropriately. They’ve just discovered that they can intentionally change their environment and purposefully move their objects. Imagine realizing that for the first time.

In the toddler art class that I teach, I watched a 3-year old draw the most amazing underworld. He told me there were sharks, there were mermaids, there were fish. Then all of a sudden, he takes a big blue paintbrush and he covers the whole thing. It’s gone. Everything he has just spent the past 20 minutes drawing is gone.

My first thought was, “Oh my God, he’s ruining it.”

Then I stopped and realized what was happening. This boy was not ruining his painting. He was putting this little world that he had just created in the water.

To the adult brain, all of those little drawings that he did were gone.

But to a toddler brain, he was just moving them to a place where they belonged. He was right.

And that is a schema.

So the next time you see your child doing something like this, before you react with shock, check yourself and ask, is this a schema?

We think it’s gone.

They know it’s underneath.

Love, Naava

Naava Katz is an artist, educator, and advocate for creative kids. Find her on Instagram too.

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