Art

A friend, Norie, commented yesterday about Julia's talent. And it made me smile. I appreciate the comment because sometimes in my daily round I take this talent for granted. Sometimes, it is a real pain finding bits of clay stuck to every surface in the house. And sometimes when the work that we must do with Julia dominates our lives, I can forget that what she does with clay is incredible.

Clay does not go to school with Julia, although even the kids at school know that Julia can do extraordinary things with clay and also with pencils and markers. But apart from school, clay is part of Julia's everyday activities. She may want it in the car, always wants it when she watches tv, usually wants it at the dinner table. She has never asked to take it to bed but then again, I probably shouldn't put that thought out here. She will probably start asking to go to bed with it soon. LOL. Julia's talent and drive to create is as much a part of her as breathing, as wanting to eat and play with her Little Pets. Everyone in our family loves and enjoys the arts, we have all dabbled to some extent in some art form, but none of us comes close to Julia's persistence and practice. There have been times when one or the other of us has worked hard on some form, waking up early, refraining from other activities, doing something long into the night. But we work, what I see with Julia is play and joy. Incredibly joy to work a form again and again without need to preserve or display. She does enjoy that I take pictures of her work from time to time, but for every picture there are hundreds of shapes and forms. When I think about Julia's art, I get so excited to see how it will develop and how she will grow into it.

What gives me pause, what takes my breath away is the thought that althought Julia is delayed in so many areas, she has lept over high mountains in developing her art. When she first came home, we had to show her how to smuch play dough, to roll it out, to cut out shapes, to form it into simple shapes.

The yellow clay that she used to make her latest creatures has a story. A few weeks ago Julia and Annie, her OT, spread a thin layer of yellow clay on a 5x7" piece of cardboard and then used this board to write on. The resistance that the clay offers is another way for the shapes of numbers and letters to get into Julia system. We've used it a few times during our homework and Julia did not make full use of the resistance, that is, she did not press down on the clay very hard. I was hoping that we could continue to work with it.

BUT . . . .

When we had friends over for dinner last weekend, she and Sergei must have scraped every bit of that yellow clay off the board and formed it back into a ball. They did play so nicely together and were quiet for a good deal of time without any hint of mischief. I had to laugh the next day when I found the naked cardboard and later the yellow clay in a plastic bag. I should have know that I could not keep or waste clay for such a mundane things as writing.

As for training in the arts, I am putting that on hold. Although we give Julia almost unlimited access to materials for her to make art, I have not enrolled her in any classes. At this point she still does not listen and follow directions well. Her violin and swimming lessons are the outside instructions that she gets. I am hoping that as well as learning some music and learning to swim, Julia will get to listening and doing what is asked of her. I hope too that she will learn from these lessons that there is the possibility of learning almost anything. There are time during all of her lessons and schooling right now that there is a struggle for power and control, Julia refuses and takes a stand refusing to follow any directions. I don't want that happen, at least no yet, to her art. I want her to have fun, love it, and enjoy it. She only started with play dough two years ago. When she is ready we will find her a wonderful teacher.