The Concrete Kid

Quinn is so very concrete. The whimsical and imaginary just makes no sense to him.

Two sample conversations from the last couple of days:

Mama (singing): "Here comes Quinny cottontail."
Quinn: "Hey, I'm a boy!"
Mama: "You're not a bunny?"
Quinn (politely but emphatically): "No, thank you."

***

"Quinn, what are you going to be when you grow up? Are you going to be an astronaut?"
"No."
"Are you going to be a scientist?"
"No."
"Are you going to be an engineer?"
"No."
"What are you going to be?"
"Big!"

***

Not surprisingly, drawing and coloring has been a huge challenge for Quinn. Give him a blank slate and ask him to create, and he draws a big blank. All we've gotten so far is page after page of angry back-and-forth lines covering a page.

So when I spotted a color-by-letter at the fabulous Indianapolis Children's Museum on a recent visit, I had a hunch it might appeal to Quinn's concrete nature. If it says O, you color it orange. Concrete.


I brought it home and trotted it out, and the results were nothing less than astonishing. This rooster picture was the very first one he did. And instantly, he went from angry scrawls to this (he even signed and dated it when he was done):