Parental Success

My parents did a lot of things right.  For starters, they never tried to stop me from being creative or artistic.  While I wouldn't say they encouraged me, they were receptive to the idea of me making things. 

For as far back as I can remember, we had a Christmas tin filled with old crayons available to us.  There were hundreds of crayons, mostly broken and from the 70's, but we still loved them.  There was always construction paper and general art supplies for us to play with.  I appreciate that so much now that I am older.  Now that I am older,  I have drawing supplies and a mounted pencil sharpener on all three floors of my house.  My attic is the main art studio, but there is no shortage of basic creative tools among the entire house.  It's an artist's dream.  

Some summers my mom would let me draw with chalk on our front porch.  I would spend hours covering every square inch of smooth concrete with drawings.  It was wonderful and special because our front porch is where visitors would come so I wasn't allowed to draw there very often.

There were plenty of times I ruined things in our house because of something I was "making" or trying to make.  I never asked permission to create stuff or use my parents things for my creations.  Somehow, my parents didn't get on my case about it.  They just let me do my thing and never extinguished my enthusiasm about it.

I remember when I got a little older, my dad build a nice room off the back of his pole barn.  The idea was this would be his office.  After getting it all set up and beautified, he decided he didn't like to be out there by himself reading blueprints, so he returned to reading prints at the dining room table and the "office" became my first art studio. 

I think about how my parents gave me a perfect furnished space to use as my art studio and how generous that was.  I know a lot of kids who had to ask permission to eat a snack and here I was being given a whole 12' x 12' space to create in.  I'm pretty thankful for that.

I am also thankful for not having parents who tried to control my life and force me into anything I did not want to do (except go to school, ride the bus or interact with others in a social manner).  They very much treated me like an individual.

It is my belief that no one's parents are perfect but most of them do the best they can with the resources they have.