My grandmother came of age in the Depression and saved scraps of tinfoil until we put her in the ground at 89, and I learned more from her than I ever did in school.

If I could exhume her, I'd ask her which side was right -- the obsessive child-art savers or the ruthless thrower-outers -- and she'd look at me like I was crazy and say "Don't these people have a mortgage to worry about? FOOD?"

I throw out the vast majority of my kids' artwork. First of all, we would have to move to a bigger place if we kept everything. Second, not everything deserves to be kept.

Mothers who pretend everything is worth saving for posterity raise spoiled little brats who think the world revolves around them.

Yes to saving some. No to saving all.

If I saved every piece of art work from 3 kids, my house would be a fire hazzard. I always hung things in my kitchen and when new ones came home, they'd get replaced. Things that had meaning or were really exceptional stayed. It made the kids proud that their work was displayed but didn't give them a false sense that every stroke of crayon was pure genius. I've saved some pieces in the attic for when they have their own families along with photographs from their childhood. They still get a kick out of some of the stuff when we pull out Christmas decorations.

Have these people never heard of a happy medium? If my kid's bringing home 2 or 3 pieces of coloring-book "art" every day, it's getting tossed. Mostly. Except for one or two that just seem cute.

Kid brings home something she's drawn herself, expressing herself? That I'll try to hold on to. But not to such an extent that I run out of storage space.

Isn't 4 a little early to be learning the hard lessons?

Yup. More importantly, kids are learning how to draw, learning to exercise their talents and what talents they even have. I think there's a median between teaching kids the lessons they need to know to succeed in life, and being cruel. The mom profiled is just plain cruel.

Back in the day, there was something parents did called hiding the stuff away in a little file cabinet that you would eventually dump (my grandmother had that one for all the grandchildren art). You put one drawing on the frig, switch it out and put the others in the little file cabinet. Once a year, you throw the stuff out quietly. It would be nice if some of these so-called parents would return to this form of civility.

Exactly, Rishawn, and hi -- and great work you're doing, speaking of kids (and education).

If the kid is pulling the pictures out of the trash then I think it's time for a change of approach. Maybe take the bundle of the day and ask her which one she'd like to put up on the fridge and rotate them out every week.

There's definitely a happy medium between "keep nothing" and "keep everything." I wouldn't expect even a mom to get sentimental over coloring-book pages, but if the girl pulls them out of the trash then clearly they're important to her.

It's my job to avoid raising a hoarder

It's also your job to raise a kid who can discern a difference between used fast-food wrappers and...I was going to say "art" but much contemporary art is assembled garbage...

How about "it's your job to teach your child that what they do matters"?

Here is where one can tell Amy is not a mom. You can not and should not keep all their art. They produce TONS a day. My kids make one, it goes on the fridge, the next day it's replaced. If they're especially fond of it, or I am, I keep it in our art folders, or mail it to Gma. Otherwise we toss it. She didn't say she wasn't keeping ANY, just not all.

What I've always done was save everything in a big box until the box is full, then sort through it with the kids. Even little kids will be much less sentimental about a drawing a few months after they make it. Most of the stuff does end up getting thrown out, but at least the kids are a part of the process.

I think every single parent here is going to tell you that it's impossible to save everything, because it truly can't be done. What turns it into a "Chinese mother" thing is the emphasis on high quality. To me, some of the "bad" drawings and cards with misspelled words are the most precious of all.

"If they're especially fond of it, or I am,"

I think that was the point.

"But Elisabeth has been known to fish her drawings out of the trash and present them to her mother. "I'll say, 'Oh, thank you,' " Ms. Hanff said. "We'll have a discussion. I'm not callous. But once she turns away, often I'll toss it out again.""

It looks as if this mother is thinking of only her own feelings, judging by this example...

Is there a known link between kids art and hoarding behavior? Why is she trying to medicalize the issue?

Also isn't it a bit cold to put the kids work in the garbage where she can find it - she obviously knows where mommy puts it. The poor little girl is left to pick through the trash, hoping to get a little approval from her ice queen mother.

How much space, really, do those drawings take up? Can't you stick them in a box somewhere? After a year, maybe you'd have a full box.

You'd be surprised with 3 kids how much space it takes up especially when they are younger. My son's Nursery School was big on crafts and drawings. I did save a lot because much was personal but I tried to differentiate between a printout with some coloring and actual projects. But I would never do it in a way to hurt any of my kid's feelings. Most things made the fridge and wall in the kitchen until replaced by new stuff. The tossed stuff was tossed quietly and privately, as in way after they were asleep and didn't realize some stuff was gone. Even with throwing some stuff out, you'd be surprised at the amount of room the saved stuff in boxes takes up. My living space wasn't large and my storage space wasn't either.

I think it's less about throwing it out and more about HOW she's throwing it out. I mean, it sounds to me like she's being a bitch about it. Would it kill her to put it in the trash when the kid's not looking?

If those 2 to 4 crayon drawings a day were done on ordinary 8 1/2 by 11 paper, a whole years worth of kiddie art could be stacked neatly into a pile less than 6 inches high in a corner of a closet somewhere. Let the kid pick her best drawing of the week, put it up on the fridge next to the calendar for a while, stack the rest neatly somewhere, toss it discretely after she's forgotten about it and moved on to something new. A place foe everything & everything in its place sounds like a more valuable lesson for a kid to start learning than Mommy is a cold-hearted bitch.

Dont most people have scanners these days? Nobody has to keep the paper itself anymore

Things that had meaning or were really exceptional stayed. It made the kids proud that their work was displayed but didn't give them a false sense that every stroke of crayon was pure genius. I've saved some pieces in the attic for when they have their own families along with photographs from their childhood. They still get a kick out of some of the stuff when we pull out Christmas decorations.

Posted by: Kristen at January 29, 2011 6:27 AM

What I've always done was save everything in a big box until the box is full, then sort through it with the kids. Even little kids will be much less sentimental about a drawing a few months after they make it. Most of the stuff does end up getting thrown out, but at least the kids are a part of the process.

Posted by: KarenW at January 29, 2011 6:54 AM

_________________________

Those two posts are the best, IMO.

My mother had (and has) serious problems, and was quite the neatness freak, but she would never throw out anything of mine without my consent. (Mainly because she was as sentimental about HER childhood books, toys, and mementos as I was/am about mine.) If I had insisted on clinging to every sculpture or scrap of paper, she'd probably have said something like: "Well, I can't get you any birthday or Christmas presents this year; you clearly have no room for them."

Not that that ever happened. I THINK what happened was, she simply said regularly: "Isn't it time to sort through your things and get rid of a few?"

Unfortunately, I got rid of a few rare books and magazines that now I wish I'd kept, but years later, I managed to buy most of them online.

School projects I really don't miss at all, though. Besides, as Miss Manners wrote decades ago: "If children are born naturally good, why do they teach themselves to walk by holding on to the edge of the dining room table cloth? If they are naturally creative, why do they all draw alike?"

And (from a Judy Blume character, no less - complaining about her mother and little brother): "She says ooh and aah over all his pictures, which aren't great at all, but just ordinary first grade stuff."

Ironically, pushing bad art is not restricted to children. When I moved into my first apartment, my mother, who had taken up artistic painting showed up one day with three paintings, after I specifically said no to paintings and nailed them to the wall herself.

Mom let us worry about our own stuff. I don't remember too many of our masterpieces ending up on the refrigerator, but they weren't tossed out, either. Once they had been shown to her for inspection and admiration, we could keep whatever we wanted, in our bedroom. Keeping it safe and in good condition was our problem.

I don't recall any big traumas about this. The stuff lasted about as long as we worried about it lasting, then it was shoved aside for the next work of art. We threw them away on a regular basis.

Why do people make everything so damned dramatic?

Throwing away your kid's artwork in front of their face is the equivalent of throwing away a wedding present you don't like right at the wedding shower. It's unspeakably rude, and you don't get a pass on rudeness just because it's your own kids. Even more so in fact, since these are your children and not great-aunt Edith who you don't like much anyway.

And I am saying this as one of the least sentimental people ever. I love throwing stuff away (it's cathartic!) and much to my mom's disappointed I have told her that I will never, ever want any of the momentos or artwork or school projects of mine that she's saved (although maybe my own kids would get a kick out of it someday). When I used to babysit the kids would draw me pictures all the time and I'd always toss them when I got home--it's not like they knew what I was doing with it. But I would NEVER toss a child's work, probably that he/she made specifically for me, in front of their face.

To anyone who's not a mom, it's not just nice neat 8 by 12 pictures. It's ceramic pig salt and pepper shakers (just got 'em), bird houses, clay sculptures, mobiles, spice boxes, life size tracings. . .or variations thereof each year, every year, from preschool on. Oh and the biographies she writes for class, the posters she makes about history, the exam packets where she did better than expected, science projects, spelling tests, the stories she writes on her own, cloth toys she creates. . .

I'd literally need another house.

So we pick and choose, sometimes together, sometimes when she's asleep. But keeping it all is insane. It's like those thousands and thousands of photos and movies people take of their children rather than actually participating with their children. I always wonder: Which of these kids will grow up to have no life and thus the time to look at all this stuff mama saved for precious.

I'm disgusted. I loved drawing as a child, and if anyone had thrown out any of my drawings, I would have been very upset.

"It's my job to avoid raising a hoarder, and I'm leading by example."

No, you're leading by tyranny and stupidity. If you want to avoid raising a hoarder, there's a much simpler way. As soon as they're ready, give your child a bit of cupboard space to keep their own stuff, explain there is limited space, and that they can only keep so much. Then let THEM decide what is most valuable to them to keep. Then you simultaneously teach your child a whole bunch more valuable skills, such as limits on space, managing their own private property (note it's the child's private property, not your property), cost/benefit decision-making, and how to actually think for themselves. All the while avoiding being such a tyrant. Would it kill you to just dump these in a box, and let the child sort it out in a few years? How pressed for space can you really be? Chances are they'll throw it out themselves when they're old enough.

By the time I was 8, I had decided on my own that my drawings from age 4 sucked. By the time I was 12, I had long decided my drawings from age 8 sucked. And so forth. The only drawings I still have are from when they actually started being 'good to excellent' (I'm very good at drawing and painting), at around age 13 or 14. I hate keeping ugly, embarrassingly bad drawings anyway.

These childhood drawings happen to be amongst the only things I actually still treasure from my mostly miserable childhood.

"Mothers who pretend everything is worth saving for posterity"

Ignoring the blatant straw man for a moment: Sure, but mothers are also supposed to provide loving validation and encouragement and guidance that kids needs for things like their drawings, even when they look crap to an adult's eye. That's how and why they remain motivated to develop talents. This mother is sending the message 'don't bother, I don't care, and your stuff is crap'. There's a huge range of available behaviour and responses inbetween 'pretending everything is worth saving' and just being a bitch and tossing them in the trash can.

This is also a pet hate of mine: You NEVER throw away someone else's stuff without checking with them. Not even a child.

"I'm not sentimental about those at all"

Uh yeah but it's not your stuff, and maybe your child is. I'm not sentimental about your socks but I don't come into your house and throw them away.

"To anyone who's not a mom, it's not just nice neat 8 by 12 pictures. It's ceramic pig salt and pepper shakers (just got 'em), bird houses, clay sculptures, mobiles, spice boxes, life size tracings"

OK I'm a computer nerd but I had a digital solution for some of the old stuff from my childhood - take photographs or scan it. That's enough to 'keep the memories', because that's really what you're trying to ultimately do anyway, and now it all just lives on a hard disk with other photos etc. (with backups of course). Scanned drawings don't really take any physical space. Still, it's quite some work to scan them all. But this is something a child could do themselves once they reach a certain age.

What Lobster said. I have two boys who both love to draw, cut, paste and paint. I take digital pictures of almost everything. They have a file on the computer that says something like "Billy's Art" so they know where it is.
Holiday appropriate stuff is kept until the holiday is over. Then it goes in the trash.
Having said all that, I don't ever through away things right in front of my kids. Like a lot of "mommy work", it is done quietly behind the scenes while people are at school, asleep, or out sledding in the snow.

"You NEVER throw away someone else's stuff without checking with them. Not even a child."

Nope. They live in my house, and my house is MY house, not theirs. They don't get to take over the whole place, and if they leave their stuff where they know it's not supposed to go more than once, it's gone. I have exactly 2 of those places in the whole house, but I do not need their permission to get rid of things.

I had a Mother like this, and I still remember the nightmares I had of her vacuuming everything I owned up into a black hole, never to be seen again. I was 5, and I still remember those dreams like it was yesterday.

There is such a thing as stealth. You don't have to throw everything away, and the things you do you can do after the child is asleep. Most of the time, the kid will never even notice.

But if you feel the need to "teach a lesson", think about what kind of lesson you will be teaching.

This whole thread reminds me of what I learned on my first trip to Bloomingdales. I was 22 and going to Law School in New York City. I had come from the Rocky Mountain west where malls were few and far between and the selections of everything was pretty limited. I think I was looking for a blue shirt. Don't remember why exactly but I needed a blue shirt. If I had been back home I would have probably had a choice of one or two that were my size and would have picked one and been done with it. On arriving at Bloomingdales, I was confronted with the fact that Bloomingdales organized by color and size that were probably at least twenty different blue shirts to chose from. I literally could not make a decision and walked out of the store.
Little kids have no abilitiy to identify what is valuable or unique and what is not. Winnowing the art work with them teaches them selection, choice and discernment. There is no reason to keep pages of cookie cutter colering anymore than there is to keep pages and pages of practice printing and math. Little kids do best if you don't make them make too many choices and when they are very young the choices should be bianary. Yes or no, A or B. and then stick too it. My mother's biggest parenting mistakes were always offering me a choice, and then back tracking on it by pressuring me to choose whatever she thought was best. I remember bursting into tears at a shoe store (I was probably six at the time) when my mother thought a pair of saddle shoes were the cutest things she had ever seen, and I thought they were the ugliest shoes ever made. (They probably were the height of fashion in 1932 but they were not in 1962) I knew that if she bought them I would be forced to wear them so I had to stop the process before they were paid for. :-)

I was confronted with the fact that Bloomingdales organized by color and size that were probably at least twenty different blue shirts to chose from. I literally could not make a decision and walked out of the store. - Isabel

That is the first time I have heard some describe the case like that for them personally. A program I watched recently talked about how making good shopping decisions looked quite key. The noted a strong correlation between being poor and being a poor shopper - unable to make decisions when making purchases, let alone informed ones. One of the interviewed researchers thought it was one of the most important skills to teach children. They were trying to start a program to teach the poor to shop.

I save most of my son's drawings until the end of each school year (or until Winter Break, if it's too much). Then I go through them all, pull out 5 or 6 really nice ones, and put them in the photo album. If it's just a rough drawing he did, it goes where it belongs, in the trash. He can have fun, but that doesn't mean I have to keep it.

This is probably a good conflict for parents and children to work through before they get to middle school and we have that talk about why, while I'm very proud of their academic achievement, I'm also proud of the Porsche* and that honor student bumper sticker is not going to clutter it up.

*I'm feeling optimistic today