I’m not a very crafty parent, which is somewhat incongruous, as I am a crafty person. I sew, knit, crochet, make Waldorf-style dolls, dabble at quilting, but I don’t really do kid crafts. It should come more naturally than it does, because I’m also a 12-year veteran of Girl Scouting, including several years as a camp counselor to 2nd and 3rd graders. I know how to finger weave, make paper bag hand puppets, make my own candles and all of those great crafts, but it just never occurs to me to do them.
I never sit down and think, “Gee! I sure would like to have the kids make their own crayons today!” I don’t make tomato sauce and make that mental leap to, “Wouldn’t it be fun to use this as finger paint on butcher paper?” I seldom, if ever, come up with holiday, seasonal, or weather related craft ideas on the fly. Even things like painting and working with clay don’t pop into my head as an idea for filling time. The Tank came home from preschool yesterday wearing a beautiful necklace made from dyed, dry pasta of different shapes and sizes, and I never, ever would have thought to make something like that.
Why are some parents like that and others aren’t? I have friends who routinely set up seasonal sensory tables for their children, who make their own playdough on a whim, who always have an idea for something like paper pumpkins or turkeys to provide holiday-relevant activities, who festoon their mantels with garlands made from paper leaves colored and cut out by their children. I’m an intelligent person. I daresay that I’m at least a moderately creative one. I like to think I’m even a fairly fun mom at times. Why don’t I even think about making designs from glue and shaking cinnamon and glitter on to them? Why don’t I make felt “paper” dolls with my kids? Why don’t we make and bind our own books?
Am I missing a creativity gene? A parenting gene? Am I somehow wrong-thinking and a right-thinking parent would do these things? I feel guilty when I see all the crafts my friends do with their children, because I worry that my kids are missing out on some special part of childhood that a better or more progressive/involved parent would offer them. I don’t remember my mother providing us with endless craft activities as we grew up, at least, not outside of Girl Scouts. I always thought that was what Scouting was for. My boys don’t do Scouting (Captain Science tried, but we quit half a year in, because it was every bit as bad as I’d thought it would be, and then some). I know I’ll want to lead a Girl Scout troop for Babypie at some point, and I’m sure we’ll do make all the milk carton ice candles, clothespin reindeer, and paper plate masks there that a little girl could desire, but what about my boys? Are they going to suffer and be uncreative individuals for a lack of crafting in childhood?
How do I find the motivation for this? Do I even need the motivation for this? Will macaroni jewelry be the dividing line between the wise and the foolish, the enlightened and the worldly, the creative and the dull? Does so much depend upon a tissue paper mosaic of a red wheelbarrow, glazed with homemade finger paint, beside the pipe cleaner chickens?
