Through a Toddler's Eyes

... and it's obvious in their drawings.

When my middle daughter, Bethany, was three, she loved to draw pictures of our family. She most often drew all of us standing in the yard at the front of our house. There were flowers and trees all around and almost always, a fence or creek.

The main focal point of the drawing, was Daddy, Mommy, Bethany and her two sisters, the house, flowers growing beside us, and off to the side, a tree with huge apples — red, purple, or even blue.  If we had a family pet, he or she was there, as well.

The people she drew were always stick figures of varying sizes, Daddy being the largest, down to Heather, the smallest and youngest.

What was always obvious in each of her drawings was a large circle right in the midsection of each stick figure— Daddy’s circle was the oddest with little lines coming out from it all the way around.

When I asked Bethany what the circles were, she gave me an exasperated look. “Momm-ee, can’t you see? Those are our belly buttons! They only look like a hole, but they aren’t really, ’cause holes are s’posed to go somewhere.”

(oh gee … my bad)

-*-

“Why does Daddy’s belly button look so … different?”

“Momm-ee, ‘that’s cause Daddy’s belly button has lots of hair.”

(I should have seen that one coming)

Anyway, that’s what inspired this children’s poem:

Belly Buttons

Belly buttons look so funny.
Some have lots of hair.
Some are in, some are out …
just a hole that goes nowhere.

-*-

[from the book, “Me Too! Preschool Poetry, by C.J. Heck]

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
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