We went to story-time today at one of our local Borders stores.  I am not a big fan of story time, because quite frankly my toddler cannot sit that long and he has the attention span equal to the life span of a gnat–about 33 seconds.  So being in a confined space surrounded by shiny objects that do nothing but distract with a bunch of other highly distracted kids isn’t my idea of family fun.  But to Minnow’s credit, he did a really good job.  He flirted with another little girl in our mom’s group and looked at the book being read. 

After story-time, the kids made a little bear.  They colored, etc.  Minnow was coloring (well not really coloring–he was drawing with a small golf pencil).  He was standing next to a set of sisters and the girls mother was standing behind them commenting on their coloring.  Her one daughter–I’d say she was about 3–was starting to color outside of the lines.  The mother pointed to the color outside of the line and told her to watch what she was doing and then preceded to tell her to look at how good her sister was doing. 

I felt really sorry for the little girl.  The tone the mother used was not one of jest but of pure seriousness.  Really, kids can’t color outside of the lines?  Kids can’t work it out for themselves?  Kids can’t explore and take risks?  Kids can’t be creative?  Do we really start to indoctrinate our kids that there are rules and lines in life that should not be crossed?  I hope to let my son color outside of the lines–at this point I haven’t even really given him lines to draw in. 

Let the child explore and try and color outside of the lines to test the waters.  Let them stretch their wings and see what they hit. 

How do you encourage your child to stretch their wings and color outside of the lines?