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How do you teach a child to be neat?  I've talked to my children 'til I'm blue in the face about keeping their room picked up, keeping their room "neat."  It will take a while, and hopefully with lots and lots of practice my children will eventually learn the value of neatness.

But teaching neatness at school is an entirely different thing.  Being neat at school revolves around the idea of "staying in the lines" especially in kindergarten.  We've all heard the phrase before.  Chances are good that each of you reading this blog right now was told at some time or another to "please color inside the lines."

For example, take a look at the picture above.  This was a page out of the Cheese's "My N Book" that he did at school, the letter "N" being the letter of the week.  On each page there was a letter "N" picture for the kids to color and to write the word "has" (one of his new sight words) in the blank. 

Now obviously from the example you can see that the Cheese isn't the best about staying in the lines when it comes to coloring.  There is no doubt that he could be a little neater.  We also need to work on writing the letter "A" since he wrote all of them backwards. 

But more than disappointment in his lack of neatness, I was impressed with his wonderful creativity.  I have noticed a lot lately that the Cheese has been drawing a lot of backgrounds.  If there is a wagon on the page, he will not only color it red, but he will also give it a road to ride on, along with a blue sky and a yellow and orange sun.  I like to believe that he is thinking about the whole picture. 

In my opinion, life can't always be about staying in the lines.  The moments in life that we spend living outside of the lines are the times when great ideas are born.  That's where creativity lives--outside of the lines.

I'm not saying that his teacher was wrong in telling him that he needed to "work on (his) neatness."  I think that it's important that he learn what the world's expectations are, and typically that involves being neat and orderly.  If we never learned to stay in the lines (i.e., follow the rules) then the world would be filled with lots of people doing whatever they want, whenever they want, with no respect for order and rules.  

Maybe I feel this way because I'm his mother (okay, it's definitely because I'm his mother), but I think that he wasn't as neat as he should have been because he wasn't worried about staying in the lines because for him it was more important to give the squirrel a branch to sit on, connected to a beautiful tree, with a world full of sunshine.

I told the Cheese, "Buddy, it's important that you slow down and take your time and be a little neater." 

His head drooped a little as I spoke.

"But you know what?  I am so proud of you for doing such an awesome job on drawing backgrounds for each picture.  I love how creative you are becoming!"

And from his beaming smile I feel pretty sure that there will be more of both--neatness and creativity--in his future.   

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