My 3 Year Old Future Artist: It is Fun Watching Toddlers Develop!

I Guess I Am Just Simply a Proud Dad

Both @afturner and I have loved drawing for as far back as we can remember and we were sure that @little-ricky would eventually be the same. However, up until the last few months he has shown almost no interest in coloring or drawing of any kind. Seemingly out of nowhere, he just start drawing characters. He jumped from scribbling to immediately drawing fairly coherent stick figure characters.

Now I realize that I his dad and will be amazed by everything that he does, but he is barely 3 years old so I am quite impressed. He has been watching Amanda while she works and tries to copy her strokes. @afturner says that he makes broad strokes when he draws like an artist, as opposed to the crazy way that I do it with my heavy hand.

I have have always sketched and doodled and was generally one of the better artists in whatever school I was in as we moved around back in the day. However, I never really learned how to use the pencil properly and always pressed to hard. Apparently Ricky is showing signs of learning to draw the right way, at least according to his mother. Haha!

It has been really fascinating watching him learn and grow. I have always assumed that kids learn in a sort of linear way, where knowledge and skill is acquired in a very smooth fashion. But I suppose it is just like how everyone learns. A lot of progressions and regressions. The surprising thing is, he will often go from completely not being able to do something to being able to effortlessly breeze through it.

I have noticed this phenomena no prominently when it comes to language development. I was really worried about him for a while there because his speech development has been a bit behind. The doctors blamed it on the lack of exposure to other children and older people due to the Covid pandemic. But that all changed very rapidly once we got him into daycare several times a week.

It seems like out of nowhere his vocabulary just explodes. He will be having a lot of trouble articulating something and then one day he'll just blurt out a very complete meaningful sentence. I just kind of turn my head a bit stunned and say ok, he knows that then.

We have a lot of hopes for what he will decide to do with his life and want to encourage him in whatever direction he wants to go. I do hope he will be interested in something that we are able to help him with, such as technology, art, or music. But you sure can't force it. I definitely don't want to be one of those dads who pressures there kid into being a doctor or a lawyer. Ultimately, the best we can hope for our kids is that they will be healthy and most importantly, happy!