The first time your toddler sets pencil – or crayon or marker – to paper, the results may not seem like much to write home about. Would you be surprised to know that scribbling is an important part of your child’s development
You may not have thought of yourself as an art teacher, but at this stage of your child’s life, you could be the most important one she’ll ever have. Your first lesson: Sit down with two pieces of paper – one for you and one for her. With one fat crayon, make few lines on your paper. Give your child a crayon and invite her to try. She will make what looks to grownups like "just a scribble." But it’s really so much more.
At this stage in a child’s cognitive development, he is learning cause and effect – how his own actions bring about observable change in the environment. Even as so many milestones are being met, scribbling stands out as particularly significant. The child creates a visible, permanent record for others to see – the first rudimentary steps in a form of self-expression which will eventually lead to drawing, painting, and writing. Scribbling is thus an important step in learning to communicate.
So give your toddler many opportunities to scribble – and don’t expect much else to happen for a while. A child might make his first marks on paper between 18 and 30 months. Following this wonderful event, a typical developmental sequence would be:
- Random Scribbling Stage
For about six months, your child’s marks have more to do with his growing motor awareness than with his interest in or desire for results. He is simply enjoying the process.
- Controlled Scribbling Stage
At some point, your child will discover the connection between her movements and the marks she leaves on the paper. She will realize she has control over the size and direction of the marks, leading to much more purposeful scribbling – repeated back and forth or diagonal lines.
- Naming Stage
Usually around the age of 3, a child begins to connect his scribbling and the world in which he lives. You may not notice much of a change in his scribbles, as it’s really a change in his cognitive development which has taken place. Pointing to his own efforts and naming familiar objects – mommy, daddy, a house, a tree – is a giant step into imaginative thinking. From now on he will see all the marks he puts on paper as a form of communication.
As your child develops, you can encourage her growth by providing other artistic media. Brush painting – with really big brushes and really big paper – means opportunities for major movement. Clay and Play Doh encourage lots of hand and finger exercise as a child goes through the “scribbling” stages before gaining more control. Finger-painting, with its hands-on, nothing-between-my-hands-and-the-medium immediacy will probably always be Just The Greatest with toddlers.
So the next time your toddler draws you a picture, take the time to read between those fat, purple lines.
