To colour or not to colour

Azalia doesn't like to colour with crayons or colour pencils. She prefers to paint. She can colour and when she wants to and she can do it nicely, within the lines and all. But she doesn't like to colour. The other day her teacher said she would throw tantrums if forced to colour. She prefers doing lots of worksheets and drawing.

I don't exactly mind that she doesn't like to colour because hey... different kids have different interest. But since some of her school activities involves colouring and some of her homework too, I didn't want her to get penalised for not colouring.

One time I asked her why she doesn't like to colour. She says its boring. It takes a lot of her time, and its mundane. She prefers colouring small pictures but big ones she doesn't like.

I thought of a way to solve this, and then one day she gave me the solution herself. She asked me what mixture of colours can make another colour. Apparently in her school they had just learnt how when primary colours are mixed they get the secondary colours. So when she asked me that question, I took her homework out, and told her.. why not you mix the colours and see.

So she said she wanted to make green. I asked her where in the picture she wants to put green, and told her to colour yellow and blue on that part of the picture. She happily coloured and I could see she was fully concentrated in it. I was overjoyed. She wanted to colour. I didn't make her but she wanted to.

And when we're done with that we moved to another one and soon she finished the whole picture. I then told her that the next time she colours, why not mix the colours instead of using only one colour. And she thought that was fun enough.

There were no screaming matches. No forcing.. just a very calm and peaceful interaction between the two of us and she did the thing I wanted her to.

I guess that book I bought do have a point. Its easier to have kids to do things when they want to do it. So find how to make them want it and they would do it. But of course that takes time.. figuring out the HOW. Parents have to be fully aware of what their kids like or dislike and what motivates them. I suppose once both parents and kids get the hang of this it'll be less stressful.