What to do if a Child is Behind in their Development   Still Drawing Scribbles Connections with Writing Encouragement | Practice   It is very important that "we never try to hurry or push a child who is still in the scribble stage. This only slows his progress toward the next developmental stage." (Louis Hoover 1972, p.5)   Still Drawing Scribbles Of course not all children will reach these stages of development at the same age. If a child has had very little experience with drawing when they first come to school, it is likely they will only be at the scribbling stage. It's important to remember that scribbling is a really important stage in development. Top   Connections with Writing Lambert Britain (1979, p.57-59) has found that those children who are still at the scribble stage of drawing, primarily are also unable to write their name with correct letters. Rather they write their name with a smaller scribble. As the child progresses through the drawing stages and draw recognisable objects, their letters also start to become recognisable. This demonstrates the importance in scribbling and how it is necessary in the development of both drawing and writing.   A child makes unrecognisable sounds before they begin to speak. They also learn to walk, by first crawling then stumbling then falling. A child will miss their mouth when they learn to feed themselves. Similarly, children need to scribble to gain the hand eye coordination necessary to be able to draw and write. Top   Encouragement Encouragement is vital in art development and each child in their own time will arrive at their own style of drawing. For those students who really seem to be behind, a teacher can stimulate the child to form specific images. For example, they could ask what the person in the picture is doing and this will help the child to visualise things they could draw and ways to draw them. This will also help them to represent other objects of their choosing in their own creative way.   For all children, not just those developing slowly, it's important to encourage, give sincere praise and stimulate their thinking. Top   Practice As with many things &endash; practice and exposure to a variety of forms of art will stimulate improvement. (It's important to note that the phrase practice makes perfect is very inappropriate in art. After all, what is a perfect piece of art?) Children should be encouraged to draw what they see, how they see it, or what is important to them, not how something looks in someone else's eyes. Practice will allow for development, not the illusional perfection.   Top