Dear Addie,
You've struggled with fact or fiction for as long as I can remember. You tend to see things very black & white and matter of fact, while the world, however, is set to more grey tones.
Allow me to explain.
When you and your siblings were young, we spent a lot of our time doing art projects: finger painting the bathtub before bath time, ripping paper for decoupage projects, or just coloring pictures. It's safe to say fine motor art was our jam! I did draw the line, however, at glitter. You see, Addie, once you invite glitter into your home, you'll realize quickly that it came with baggage, moved in, and never left, it's everywhere - FOREVER, but I digress. Long story short, we did and still do a lot of art around here, or at least some of us do, as long as it's in a more abstract way for you; when it's too black and white, you seem to struggle with the concept.
Let's take school, for example. The number of coloring sheets a child receives during their elementary years could fill a few pretty thick encyclopedia-style books, with most of them being a picture of some real-life object or scenario—now let's take the outline of a butterfly for example. You know what a butterfly is and that it has many beautiful colors, but distinguishing the paper butterfly from a real butterfly is somewhat challenging for you, so much so that your initial reaction when given a paper butterfly picture or a butterfly object is to throw it because butterflies should fly. You also lick pictures of ice cream cones because that's what you do with ice cream. It makes sense; I get the thought process. Taking it a step further, markers are merely a color to be drawn on paper, usually in a line to signify its color existence, not to color in an object that is often real in comparison. In your mind (and you are not wrong), we would never take a marker outside and color a real butterfly, so it just doesn't compute completely. It's not you being lazy at art or a hater of Monet; it's just that it quite frankly doesn't make sense.
Until this week...
This week, I came to pick you up from school, and your teacher proudly showed me a 3D wooden butterfly that you colored and not only colored but with many colors, and entirely at that! While you did throw it to test its flying ability a few times, you sat and colored this fictional wooden butterfly beautifully.
Addie, this week, you did something independently that took a lot of thought to distinguish fact from fiction, a concept that has always been challenging for you, and it turned out beautifully.
Keep working hard, Ad!
Love,
Mom