You’re trying to put the milk away when a piece of paper appears beside you.
The refrigerator door is open. A corner of an older painting lifts as you move it. You catch it against the door with your elbow, shift the milk to your other hand, and take the new arrival.
“Look.”
There is quite a lot to look at. You turn the page a little. Your child waits.
Somewhere behind the paper is the kitchen you were in the middle of dealing with. But for the moment, there is this.
One parent described a kindergartner who brought home a new creation every afternoon and expected them to identify it. On one occasion, the parent guessed a dog.
It was a rainbow.
The favorites went on the refrigerator. The collection kept growing. Eventually, the parent wanted to know how everyone else decided what to keep.
It is a very reasonable question. There is only so much refrigerator.
But before the question of where another picture will go, there is sometimes something worth staying with: the small surprise of having no idea what you’re looking at, while the person who made it is right there.
For once, you don’t have to know
So much of parenting involves explaining the world.
That’s a fire hydrant. Those berries aren’t for eating. The moon hasn’t gone anywhere; we just can’t see it right now. We read the signs, work the zippers, know which way to turn. Even when we’re figuring it out as we go, we’re usually the ones expected to have an answer.
Then someone hands you a rainbow, and you think it’s a dog.
There can be something rather nice about being the person who needs things explained.
We tend to talk about children’s art in terms of what children get out of it. We supply the materials, offer encouragement, and watch the learning happen. But there can be something for the person on our side of the paper to discover, too.
In a small interview study of a preschool program combining picture books and family art activities, parents described learning about art activities themselves. One parent described learning how to build activities around unfamiliar artists’ work. Another spoke about the importance of seeing shared moments from the children’s point of view.
Those are two different kinds of discovery: finding a way into something unfamiliar, and looking again at someone we know very well.
When we say we don’t know much about art, it can sound like a reason to stand back. Leave that part to the teacher. Make sure there are crayons. But joining in needn’t always begin with having something to teach. We can come across something new ourselves, with our child beside us.
At the kitchen counter, there may be something to find out about the child, too.
A drawing gives a child something they know about that we don’t. We may recognize the shapes, but not what they were doing with them. We can see where the paper has been folded; we weren’t there when they decided to fold it. A detail we barely noticed may be the part they want to show us first.
As they point, we get to notice what they notice. We might have been looking at the biggest shape on the page while they were waiting to show us the little part at the edge. For a moment, the picture has given us somewhere to meet that we wouldn’t have thought to look.
When the page is already in your hands, it’s easy to move straight to a verdict. Beautiful. So colorful. Let’s put it on the fridge. The words are affectionate, and sometimes they’re all either of you wants. But they can also bring the looking to a close before much looking has happened.
There is another way to spend that little moment. Ask what’s happening in the picture. Follow the finger. Let yourself be corrected.
Your child might want to explain the whole thing. They might be more interested in showing how they made a flap open, or how the paper stands up. They might have handed it over and gone to find a snack. There is no need to draw a story out of someone who has finished telling you about it.
The pleasure is in being available to find something out, rather than having to deliver the right response.
For a minute, the person who usually reads the signs can let someone else point the way.
Looking isn’t the same as keeping
Of course, the pictures still have to land somewhere.
They collect beside the fruit bowl, under the mail, on the chair no one can sit on until someone moves the pile. A three-dimensional creation refuses to fit in the drawer. Yesterday’s glue is still drying when today’s arrives.
Another parent, looking into services that turn children’s schoolwork into books, wondered whether the finished book would feel the same as holding the original pages. They wanted to preserve the work without being overwhelmed by the amount of it.
It’s a question a neat solution can leave behind. A photograph is convenient. It isn’t quite the piece of paper, with its folded edge and the place where the crayon has been pressed hard enough to leave a shine. Sometimes those things are part of what you like.
And still, a house has to be lived in.
It helps to separate a few decisions that can otherwise arrive all at once. Looking at something now. Giving it a place to be seen for a while. Choosing to keep it for years.
They needn’t all have the same answer.
We can enjoy a picture at the kitchen counter without having decided whether to keep it forever. Some pieces stay because we like touching the original. Something can spend a week on the wall without becoming a lifelong responsibility.
The moment of interest has already happened. It doesn’t become less real because the paper eventually moves on.
A small place in the house
If you want somewhere to start, use somewhere that already exists: a patch of refrigerator door, a shelf, a little space beside the kitchen table.
When there’s room to choose together, ask your child what they’d like to put there. Their choice may be a surprise. Finding out which piece they want to see again is another part of looking, beyond deciding which one we think is best.
Then put it there. Let it be part of the room for a while.
When the space fills, there is a real decision to make about what comes down. Coming off display needn’t automatically mean going in the trash. Some pieces may be kept, some photographed, some set aside if there’s room. Your child may have strong feelings about a particular one; finding out which one matters is a useful place to begin.
That doesn’t give the house more walls. Even after we’ve heard what matters to a child, there’s still only the space we have. Nor does every piece need to pass through a careful system of photographing, labeling, discussing, and archiving. This is meant to make room for something we enjoy, not create an unpaid museum job.
On a busy afternoon, you may just need to put the milk away. The picture can wait on the table. Later, if your child is interested, you can look together.
The fridge will probably still be crowded. Tomorrow may bring another picture, and you may be no better at guessing what it is.
But you can turn the page toward the person who made it, and see where they point.
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