I come home the other day to find this piece of "art" hanging on our living room wall.



Now i'm all about encouraging the artistic development of my little man, however i've got a few serious misgivings about this whole idea of celebrating this form of non-art.
It's totally lame!
Now before y'all criticize me, i must declare that i understand he is a baby; and as such has had no formal art training. That's not my point. The problem i have is that it is hanging on the wall.
Oooh, look, my kid made a mess on a piece of paper! Let's sign and date it, and we'll hang it next to the faux Picasso in the living room. Even better yet i'll hang it up in my office, so that when people come in to discuss work, they'll think that someone forgot to throw away a used napkin. How would i possibly get any work done looking at that distracting car wreck all day long?

But the important thing is to see what this is teaching Alexander:
1) Look what you did! It's horrible! Yay!
2) If we hang your scribblings on the wall, perhaps you'll see this as an approval and hence cover the rest of the walls (and furniture) with similar etchings.
3) Don't worry about achieving anything meaningful in your life. Just go with the absolute minimum.
4) At least he got some on the canvas.

What are we really celebrating here folks? Mediocrity. Seriously. If i threw a wet squirrel on a piece of paper it would look better than this. Just because he happened to enter into a course of action that resulted in the monstrosity above doesn't make him a Rembrandt. As he progresses then will come the paltry block people. You know the ones; they look like a bunny rabbit after an entire herd of elephants just ran over it. And they're always the wrong color. No, people are not dark green no matter how seasick they are. But as long as there's an arrow pointing to what looks like a drunk rock with the words "daddy" above it, that makes it all right, i'm sure.

Now this doesn't mean i love the little tyke any less. It's that i'm simply not impressed. I honestly would be embarrassed to even take this piece of paper home from the school. And am i going to have a new one of these things on my wall every week? Oh goodness i hope not....