Children drawing: A skill important for child development

It is said that the best way a child expresses his/her feelings is through painting or drawing. Drawing is a strong way of communication for children who still have not developed verbal communication skills or are just introverts. Children usually draw what they find interesting or attractive and use their imagination to build up an image on the paper. 

There are only a very few activities that come as normally to children as drawing. It does not matter if your child likes chalk or colored pencils, the only thing that matters is your child has a side of creativity and active imagination building in him/her.  

Having fine motor skills allow your children to develop great independence which can help him/her with all the tasks given in front of him/her. But first, let us understand what fine motor skills mean. 

Fine motor skills include the use of the small muscle of the hands, for example, while doing small tasks like opening buttons or catching something, opening lunch boxes or using pencils or scissors while drawing or writing etc. Fine motor skills fundamentally impact the overall quality of the nature of the assignment and also the speed of the task. To be efficient in fine motor skills, it requires various independent skills all the while to properly control the game or the task.   

Here are some of the great fine motor skills for your child to try to become independent and confident. 

To teach your child to pick up little items using their thumb and forefinger, you can try stuffing an empty baby-wipe holder with scarves, and after that let the child attempt to haul them out. You can likewise give him/her toys that have dials, switches, and handles. This can also be improved by giving the child small baby puffs, where they will have to use the pincer grasp to pick up the puff and put it in their mouth, talk about serious motivation! 

It is pretty normal that your child will pick all his toys, stack them in a box or bin just to dump then again. While this action may appear to be unnecessary, it takes coordinated muscle developments, focus, and psychological thinking. Different approaches to hold the objects help to develop grasping quality. 

Your child needs hand and wrist balance to stack the blocks with stability. As big blocks are the easiest to manipulate by children when they start to get a hang of it, switch to smaller objects to help them develop the fine motor skills. 

Most children can make a stamp with a colored pencil at around 15 months and scrawl by age 2. Enormous colored pencils are best for little hands, however, you can likewise give him/her huge bits of chalk and finger-paints to communicate. 

Have your child begin using a fork and spoon at each supper. In the event, if the child makes a mess, try not to jump to his/her aid and let him/her solve the problem alone. 

Since most children appreciate drawing, this movement gives time to build up the ideas of fixation and practice. These ideas will be fundamental to your child’s scholarly achievement, even in grade school. Drawing takes a lot of concentration and patience to focus on specific details. Figuring out how to watch little details, focusing on a specific outcome of the drawing, and practice complicated strokes and patterns enables your child to develop his/her concentration power and patience. 

Drawing is a way of allowing your child to not only learn mentally but physically as well. It enables your child to concentrate on what he/she sees and how to portray the same thing on the paper with his hands. The coordination of hands and eyes are very necessary while drawing as it allows to develop his/her hand stability and concentration power to focus on details. This same coordination is important in sports and other entertaining circumstances. 

You can teach your child this hand-eye coordination skill by asking him/her to draw whatever he/she sees in front of him/her, usually a fixed object placed by a parent, and to draw it as specifically as he/she can. This will make him/her concentrate on the object and train his/her eyes and hands to draw the object while seeing the details. 

Children love to hear praise from their parents or teachers. In their first years when they first learn to draw, they go to their parents and hope to be praised by them. When a parent says, “This is so beautiful!”, “How amazing!” etc. to his/her child, the toddler gets very excited and gets a confidence boost. This boost increases, even more, when they start going to schools and teachers praise them in front of the whole class. As a parent, you most likely love to hear the expression, "Look what I made!" When your child has a chance to make physical portrayals of his/her creative ability, daydreams, and experiences, it works as a boosting system for the child. 

Drawing can enable your child to feel strongly motivated to draw more things and it also boosts his/her self-esteem. Such confidence allows him to be more creative and try different drawing mediums to see what other skills he/she can master. 

Drawing is a way for children to understand the outer world through the world of imagination. When a child learns to draw from a very young age, it not only helps him/her to develop his/her fine motor skills but enables his/her dream world as well. It allows a child to imagine a world which is beyond practicality. Although there are cartoons, books, television series and not to mention movies that help a child to imagine; when a child starts drawing he/she starts to experience the power of imagination and is able to spark creativity. He/she can visit a world of fairy tale or action. Or even something from his/her everyday life. Drawing enables him/her to design his imagination on paper with as many changes as he/she wants. 

Drawing simply allows a child to be creative, innovative and imaginative. Not to mention, drawing also shows children that there are several ways a problem can be dealt with. That way the child becomes optimistic and confident and always thinks of a positive alternative to a problem.

Here are some of the way the imagination power can be enhanced in your child through drawing. 

Just simply converse with your child. Read books together, make inquiries, and talk about everything and nothing. If you have queries like, where would you love to go to travel and why, what would happen if your child’s favorite superhero came home to visit him/her, what would you keep on the menu for the superhero, what will happen if trees turned into chandeliers and birds turned into twinkle light etc. These questions will require imagining and great imaginations will generate extraordinary answers. 

It often happens that children get bored and so do you. Sometimes getting bored is not a bad thing. You can use that time to sit down with your child get busy in drawing. Forget about the television, smartphone and get down to the old-style messy painting on the floor. Ask your child to draw whatever he/she imagines and you can help him/her with his/her imagination. However, do not force your child to imagine, help him/her to develop ideas on his/her own. 

Nothing stirs the fire of creative energy like bobbing thoughts off of another person. Cooperating with your child and coming up with interesting questions and answers to them will allow your child to expand his imagination. You can do that by reading books, playing the quiz, writing stories, poems etc. However, as for drawing, help the child to develop his/her creativity by sharing fairy tales and asking him/her to draw a character according to his/her wish. Ask him/her to be a superhero and draw him/her in a suit. That will surely do the trick. 

Drawing is one of the intuitive skills that a child can develop. This skill is not to be taken lightly as it helps the child to develop his mental and physical growth. So, if you already have not, start encouraging your child to draw. You will be amazed to see how amazing the benefits will be.

Drawing is not just to enhance a child's development and skill, it is also a fun thing to do especially during bonding session with their siblings or parents. Enjoy the drawing sessions with your children!