Now I Know: Being A Mother To A Creative Daughter

This is a guest post by Carol Jones, author at All Mommy Wants. This post is sponsored by Sony Entertainment in conjunction with the film Ricki and the Flash, in theaters August 7, 2015.

#RickiAndTheFlash #RickiJunket

Now I know.

When I was little I loved to draw. And paint. And just be completely creative in what I was doing. My problem? I didn’t think about anything else when I was being “artistic“. Like the walls, the carpet, my clothes…

Even though I got cobalt blue oil paint on white carpet, even when I decided to make a mural on my wall, my mom supported me in my creativity with a smile and an enthusiastic “GREAT JOB”, all the while thinking how am I going to get that oil paint up? The things I destroyed in my quest to expand my inspirations onto paper and canvas went unnoticed until I snapped out of my glaze and looked around, realizing that my art came at a cost. But my mom? She never really said anything, just encouraged me to be a unique child and keep my mind open and just keep creating.

Being A Mother To A Creative Daughter is amazing.

Now that I am a mother to a girl exactly like me? I know what my mom thought, how hard it is to not stifle that streak.

My daughter Riley is 5 years old, and like I said – exactly like me. She has a creative side of her that comes out the moment she puts pen to paper. She started coloring when she could barely hold a crayon. She has drawn repeatedly on walls, tables, herself (her favorite medium), and her toys. She paints her My Little Ponies to make them new characters. She draws mermaids with bright red fins, cats and dogs wearing bow-ties and holding flowers. She has glitter-painted just about every shirt that she owns, forcing me to buy her new unscathed tops. But do you know what I do?

I buy her markers and paints. I give her coloring books and blank paper. I painted her room with a huge chalkboard stripe so that she had a place to draw when the mood struck. And not once will I tell her that she destroyed something in her process, because my mom never did that to me.

See Meryl Streep and her daughter Mamie Gummer in Sony Entertainment’s Ricki and the Flash, a story about a mother and daughter trying to make things right in their relationship.