“Every child is an artist,” Pablo Picasso said. “The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” Look at toddlers banging pans, wiggling their bodies to the music, and scribbling on the floor. They are exploring their world and making their mark on it — sometimes quite literally.

But how does this early exploration turn into artistic skill? When my daughter was four, she would spend hours with a box of crayons and a stack of paper. But she didn’t draw objects that resembled anything in the human world. Instead, she would fill one page with dots and then another page with random scribbles. One week, she spent all her art time making wavy line after wavy line. I called my sister, an art educator, “When will she start drawing people or . . . anything?”

“She’s doing exactly what she should be,” Aunt Rachel assured me. “She’s exploring lines and shapes, building her fine motor skills. When she’s ready, she’ll start to put them together in creative ways.”

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Deborah Farmer Kris is a senior parenting columnist at Intrepid Ed News. This piece was originally…