Today, I opened his backpack and smiled thinking how great the sight of this paper is. Could I frame it?
When Brantley was 3, I fought so hard for our school district, who had their own preschool, to send him to a different special needs pre-school in our area. They obliged and we were over the moon.
And then he started getting his artwork sent home and it was flawlessly cut and colored.
Pumpkins cut in the most round circles I had ever seen, precisely drawn triangles with not one mark colored outside the lines and smiles drawn just right. Each project that came home was picture perfect in every sense of the word, except for the fact that Brantley clearly had no hand in them.
Knowing full well my son did not do these projects, I messaged his teacher to inquire on what technique they were using to get such great results from him. I let her know that we were struggling to have him even hold a crayon, let alone draw such perfect circles and make such straight cuts and would love to utilize their technique at home. She responded that the projects were all done using hand over hand.
That is when I went to put my muck boots on, because I knew their crap was deep.
The projects they sent home, had most certainly never been touched by Brantley. If those projects were done hand over hand like we had worked on with him so many times there would have been wrinkles from the struggle to have him attend and possibly some wildly beautiful scribbles but no cuts and certainly no asymmetry or straight lines.
Today I pulled this beauty out of his bag and smiled. I love seeing work that I know Brantley had a hand in. It’s been 5 years since that first school claimed he could do such perfection with hand over hand assistance, but they were wrong, not just because they clearly lied but because this paper that came home today is perfection. It is perfectly Brantley and that is a beautiful sight.
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