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Riven

Riven

Bad Chin
Joined
Jan 29, 2009
Messages
3,584
Location
Central Nebraska
My oldest daughter is 11. She is extremely responsible, with the occasional kid moments that all kids have.

She asked me if she could write on her walls with marker, writing phrases and drawings, like laugh, live, love, Paris!, and other places she'd like to visit some day.

Now, when I was a child I had a room that was my play room, and my mom let me paint it however I wanted, I sponge painted it, and had a giant unicorn mural... I never graffiti'd on anything other than my area, I'm not a criminal, or anything because of it.

My theory is... it's not like she's tearing a wall out. It can all be covered with a coat of paint. It lets her express herself, and I laid down ground rules, like proper spelling, nothing dumb, nothing mean...

My husband is throwing a fit. He asks "what good will come of it", and said what happens when they start writing on all of the walls in the house. Why can't they express themselves in a sketch pad or something.

Firstly, I'd like to think that my kids are smart enough to know the difference between a wall in their bedroom and a wall in mine. I have the paint in the garage to repaint it before he comes home, but honestly I don't see the big deal, if it gets abused it will come to an end. Hailey is now calling herself stupid for thinking of it and feels terrible because John's mad at me and blaming herself for it, although I'm the one who gave permission and even contributed.

I personally think he's worried that it will end up like his half sister, her parents let her do whatever, they have a 3' x 3' purple horse painting covering a broken attic window on the front of their house instead of replacing the window. She has two bedrooms there, one is her "art studio" the other is a tack room and she sleeps on the couch. She is 21 years old.

Thoughts?
 
What does it matter if she writes all over the walls? That's what paint is for anyway. I have a customer, who writes all over her walls with special markers. The walls can wiped down quickly and go back to normal.

If you have a little girl, who is turning her feelings inward and calling herself stupid, you do have a problem. John shouldn't have made her feel that way. Besides when she is 21 and wants to be an artist like his sister, what would it matter as long as she is happy? Maybe I'm strange and that's why I don't see a problem with a purple horse painting being seen on the outside of the house?
 
when i was about 12/13 years old, my dad allowed me to draw on the walls in two areas of our house - my bedroom and one section of the unfinished basement. the basement to this day is still unfinished and my creations are still on the wall down there. a friend and i traced ourselves on the wall and painted in the clothes, etc. my 'wall person' is dressed up as a horse rider, carrying a bucket in one hand. it's always a great feeling when i go down to my dad's basement and see the memory of one of the best parts of my life on the wall - my horse days :))

my bedroom had pepto bismol pink walls (not my choice, lol, it used to be my sister's room). i drew flowers, happy faces, stars, squiggly borders...... all innocent stuff.

I think John needs to take a step back and realize that kids need to have a creative outlet, with some structure (letting them do just anything isn't good).

how about paint one wall in your daughter's room with chalkboard paint? that way she could change her wall drawings whenever she wants, and if her friends come over and happen to draw/write something that isn't appropriate, it's easily taken off.

you mention your 11 yr old is your oldest child. one thing that may concern me is that the younger children may see her walls being drawn on with marker and think that it is ok to do that to their own rooms. i don't think you want to be repainting everywhere, lol! why not give each child their own chalkboard wall in their rooms?
 
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The other is 8, they both ask permission before doing things like this, anything that's not easily deconstructed.

Then the dumb part is that he tells me if they want to do stuff like that he'll put up a piece of sheet rock... so he's going to put a wall over a wall? Because that won't look dumb to have just one chunk of sheet rock screwed up to the wall...

arrrggggg....
 
I think its fantastic to have positive thoughts or sayings easily seen and also to have goals easily seen. Its a good reminder to keep striving for those goals. I see nothing wrong with it.
 
I don't see what the big deal is. I think your hubby might just be seeing the work end of it, like her getting tired of what is on the wall and wanting something different. So it needs repainted.
Or he just isn't creative.

My parents let me paint my bedroom and the chinchillas room anyway I wanted. I splash painted (actually threw the paint) on the walls in my bedroom and painted the chinnies room a BRIGHT Lime green with chinchilla footprints around the top.
They just set down the ground rules as far as things I couldn't do. Like painting the walls black or red.


Maybe run the idea of chalkboard paint across your husband and see what he thinks about that.
Or allowing her to draw on only one wall of her room.
 
Tell him your daughter is not his sister! I see nothing wrong with expressing herself. I agree she obviously would know where to draw and where not to! I say let her write her little heart out ALL over HER ROOM!
 
I think this amazing, Riven and I wish my parents would allow this. Paint can cover up anything, and I think it's important to make your room yours. Expression is how we live, and I'm very sure she isn't going to go through the walls of the house and write on everything. And even if she did, motivation in any form is amazing. I knew someone that had daily motivational such as "Never let them see you cry." that she would write on the bathroom mirror because everyone shared the mirror. When she went away for 2 weeks, her family actually said that they missed her motivational words and felt off when they weren't there.

Placing down some rules is a good idea, she does still live under your roof, so nothing offensive or lewd. I hope you do let her do this, and post some pictures for us! I'd love to see it.
 
Chalkboard paint seems the way to go! My mom just bought a house that has a wall of chalkboard paint in one of the rooms, and she's an artist so she loves drawing random things on it or even just making lists of things to do. Makes me wish I'd had that when I was a kid.
 
my daughter has one of our storage rooms converted to a mini art room, and i am going to paint the back wall with chalkboard paint. there is an art easel in there with a chalkboard on one side, but it isn't the greatest quality and i can see her outgrowing the easel in another year. one day when the 'art room' is clean (you can't see parts of the floor right now....... lol), i will get a picture of it to show you my kiddo's little creative space!
 
Yea... things got even worse. I actually called and talked to his mother because he was sending texts to my daughter threatening her if she wrote on the walls. Oh yea, I told on him, lol. His childhood was less than normal... or anything close to it, so sometimes that's the only way I can see where he's coming from.

I guess when they were young they wrote on the walls, only when they were angry and in retaliation, and it was never anything nice or worth repeating, especially on a family forum. So... we're guessing that this is what he's thinking, instead of the other things she was thinking. We painted over most of it, except the one I did for her. He'll have to fight me for it. We have a cricut and a laminater... so I'm going to let her write out any words she wants, laminate them and we'll put them up, or print stuff off etc.

Anyway, I told him that putting tacks up makes holes, and tape tears up the wall so how is that any different. I may go into town tomorrow and get a couple pieces of 4 x 8 melamine board to put up, it works just like a white board...
 
He's at work, so he's not even home. But now he's telling me not to call or text him even, lol. And he told me that I'm acting childish about this, even though I told him we painted over to make him happy...
 
His reaction seems really strong for the situation. Perhaps there is more to this story about what happened to him when he did this, like what was his punishment... or why he would act out that way when he was younger. I think whatever caused him to act out to write on the walls is driving his anger, like he's reliving that or it would be a reminder of those feelings to see it, not necessarily the fact that she wants to do it. Have you asked him what bothers him the most about the writing on the walls?
 
He keeps saying it's destruction of property...

Basically his childhood was unsupervised, he was terrified of his brother, he was sneaking out by the age of 10... Got into trouble, hang out with the wrong crowds, never violence other than fighting with his brother, who he was fairly terrified of because he had major anger issues.

Do you're telling me... he needs to read the writing on the walls? LMAO I had to say it...
 
I think he is getting way out of hand with this. It's not like she started doing grafitti all over the walls without asking. She asked permission to do this and I think that is great. She is respectful and only wants to put positive phrases and pictures. It's a great creative outlet for a young girl. Walls can always be covered with paint if things get too out of control. The chalkboard paint is a good idea too. I wish my parents would have let me do something like this, but I'm a terrible artist, so who knows what would have become of that.. lol
 
She's old enough to know the difference between the walls she can write on and the walls she shouldn't write on. I definitely would have permitted her to do so, as you would have. My stipulation would have been when she got tired of it, she would have to help paint over the writings. I always chose my battles with my kids and this would not have been one of them.
 
He's being flat-out ridiculous. I see that he clearly has strong feelings about this but he needs to understand that writing on the walls isn't nearly as destructive as the damage he's doing to his daughter's psychological well-being. This has gotten so blown out of proportion that she's never going to forget the time that daddy told her that her idea was stupid and threatened her for decorating. She's going to completely blame herself for the fight mommy and daddy had about her idea.

Tell him his behavior causes girls to become strippers and "escorts" and ask him if he thinks it's better than writing on the walls.
 
I may go into town tomorrow and get a couple pieces of 4 x 8 melamine board to put up, it works just like a white board...
Click to expand...

Check the shower/tub section, there is a thin white board that IS what they use for whiteboards (tileboard) that comes in 4x8 sheets, it's ~$11. We have it all over the office as well as plexiglass to write on.

My folks let us do whatever we wanted on the unfinished basement floor. When they sold the house the new owners loved it so much they clear coated sections of the floor instead of covering it.

Expression of self is important, I think you should do one entire wall in the tileboard and let her go to town. :))
 
If it's a regular wall in a finished part of the house, I'm definitely in the "you do not write on walls" camp. It looks tacky and the only way to fix it is to paint over it. Looking at some mess on a wall, buying painting supplies, then spending my time to paint over it isn't my cup of tea.

However, if you're putting up special boards, that seems entirely reasonable. That's great even. Will be neat to see how the things she draws reflects changes in her life over time. If you go with the stuff where designs can be erased, perhaps you could take a picture every so often. Could make a really neat photobook by the time she goes off to college.

Perhaps you could talk about it with hubby as not so much writing on the walls, and more like it's an extended easel... or a chalkboard/whiteboard... You know, take it out of the "writing on wall" paradigm and move it to an "artist/classroom supplies" vision.
 
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