It's beautiful, just not directly on my wall

Each week, my children seem to come up with something new.

Sometimes it’s good; and sometimes not.

Unfortunately, this was one of those not times. My oldest son, Matthew, 6, decided he was the new Pablo Picasso and decided to use the wall for his masterpiece as he called it.

I discovered this when I was tucking him into bed.

He said, “Mama,”

“Yes.” I replied.

“Did you see my great drawing?” Matthew asked.

“Yes. You showed them to me earlier tonight and they were great.”

“Not those. That one.” Matthew said.

My head turned and my eyes followed his finger pointing to the wall above his dresser. Sure enough, there was a drawing above his dresser. I consciously had to calm myself down before turning back around to talk to him. Instead, I decided not to turn around yet and buy myself some more time to process the situation.

Don’t panic. I thought to myself as I walked toward the wall. Maybe it was drawn in pencil.

No such luck. He had used a black pen. I tell myself it could have been worse, he could have used a permanent marker.

I finally gathered up enough courage to turn around and face him.

He was so proud of his drawing. His face had a huge smile on it. I knew I needed to handle this lightly.

“It is a beautiful drawing, but are we supposed to write on walls?” I asked him.

I thought I had treaded lightly, but one sentence had him on the brink of tears.

I explained to him, that I really did love his drawing, which consisted of a rocket ship blasting off into outer space. He had the planets Mars and Saturn and Martians in the drawing as well. It really was one of his best drawings and I made sure to tell him that over and over.

I wanted to make sure he knew it wasn’t his wonderful drawing that had made me upset, but where and what he used to draw it.

I explained to him, or at least the as best I could to a 6-year-old upset boy, that I was angry that he broke not one, but two rules.

First, he climbed up a dresser and stood on top of the dresser to make the drawing. And two, he made his drawing on the wall. After explaining the house rules again, I turned the conversation back to his drawing.

I told him we would take photos of his great drawing so we could look at them anytime we wanted to. I then proceeded to take photos of the wonderful illustration.

After he calmed down, I had him tell all about his drawing and where he got his great ideas from. I also told him that next time he wants to make a drawing so big I had enough paper for it and all he needed to do was ask.

I did leave the drawing alone for about a week. Then I bought a magic eraser and started working on a little bit of the drawing every day to try and remove the black ink off of the white, plaster wall. It’s a slow process, but it’s coming along.

Before I started washing it off, I made sure to show him the photos I had taken. He seemed happy to see those photos. I told him we could even print them off and hang them on the wall after we had the original removed.