Drawing is a Kind of Magic

1. The child puts any writing implement or other kind of art material into his or her mouth.
2. The child does not look at what is happening even as you assist the child hand-over-hand.  Even more dramatically, the child actively protests any suggestion that he or she should be involved with paper, marker, glue, whipping cream on a tray, play doh or any other art material that is offered.

Here are some suggestions:

1. If your child mouths everything art, don't make a big deal out of it.  Quietly remove the art materials and give him or her something appropriate to mouth.  A child who is still mouthing probably needs to mouth things.  Mouthing is a very early but important way of exploring the world and often indicates that your child is having trouble understanding the world through other senses.   Information coming from the mouth is making more sense.  I often create a personal set of toys that a child can mouth and hand items to him or her, sometime using a second set to show him or her some new cool ways to pop things in or out of the mouth.  I remember one child who sat with me in front of a mirror for months and we figured out some socially interactive ways of using mouthing toys.  That was a challenge.  I would not have used art materials with this little guy because, developmentally, he was not functioning at the stage where art materials made any sense at all to him.  His parents found it difficult, however, that I was not moving toward more age appropriate materials since he was five years old.  But, at eight years old, he did enjoy drawing and writing letters.  It is hard to wait, but for some children, we must wait.
   
   It is possible that your child could enjoy art materials as a means for creating things if it were not so much more fun to mouth them.  Unlike the child who seems to crave putting things into his or her mouth, some children are socially driven to mouthing art materials.  These children have discovered that they can create a great social interaction with adults by putting art materials into the mouth.  You can tell when this is a social game because it often grows into  mouthing and running.  If your child has discovered this game, it looks like this.  Whenever art materials come out, your child darts across the room with clear awareness that you will be following, stuffing art items into the mouth so that you will then run after, tackle your child and wrestle  whatever out of your child's mouth.  Really compared to drawing, this is a lot more fun.  You might want to go to the Route Games Collection and find a better running and wrestling game for your child to play with you and think of ways to do art that don't offer so much running and mouthing potential.
2. Some children do not seem able to both look at things and physically manipulate things like markers on a paper. My colleagues who study the sensory system issues of autism have a theory that this indicates that the child is having significant sensory processing difficulty.  This might mean that the child is confused by two incoming streams of information--the stream of information coming in visually and the stream of information coming in through the sense of touch in the hand.  I think of this as being like the challenge of learning to drive where it seems too complicated at first to both manage the gas petal and the break while steering and also remembering the driving rules.  There are so many different ways to play that I rarely push children toward artistic play until the child shows an interest, but I must say that some persistent teachers in preschool settings (even more so persistent classroom assistants) manage to introduce art play step-by-step and engage even the most reluctant children in drawing, cutting, gluing and painting.