Home Spun comic strip #559

My children are perfectionists. They come from a long line of perfectionists. Each exhibits this perfectionism in his or her own unique way. With Marina, she fluctuates between feeling confident in her abilities and then breaking down into tears and fears of inadequacy. As the college experiment winds down to the end of her first semester, I think I've earned half of her grade in English 101, simply because I held her hand, read through her work, and stroked her ego whenever necessary. In her defense, she had a rigorous class. Her final project was a multimedia report comprised of three essays, an interview, and annotated bibliography. Here is the link if you would like to see it. (I can't put it on the refrigerator, so I'm going to make certain others can see it before she tries to take it down!)

Chase does not like to use pens. His perfectionism makes him hesitant to take the chance of making a mistake. So he writes and draws in pencil. Lightly. I had this vague idea that he was turning into a good artist, but since I had to squint to see many of his drawings, I couldn't be completely sure. Last week, he was trading Artist Trading Cards with one of his friends. His friend looked at Chase's card, pulled out a Sharpie Fineliner, and started inking in my son's pencil lines. The result was spectacular. Now that he's seen his work inked in, Chase was willing to pick up a pen himself. I gave him an artist's marker filled with India ink (Sharpies tend to bleed) and he has been darkening some of his artwork. It's a first step, and I'm proud of him for it.

Sierra will get angry and crumple her work if she doesn't like it. If the picture she drew didn't match the idea in her head, or her name wasn't printed just right, her work was ruined as far as she was concerned. It took years to get her out of the habit of destroying cards we were writing for friends and family. She's also been known to squash clay sculptures that aren't working out the way she envisions them. Temperamental artists!