It’s been almost 19 years, since Arshad Bashir and I got married. We have 3 beautiful kids. My kids grew up with their adorable cousins, who as young children played, laughed, pranked and cried together. They had been partners to every torment in the house. We as elders could not do much but watch them helplessly scribbling on walls and them being the dons of the houses at such a young age!!

Apart from many headaching and muscle stretching activities in which the teams were involved were water fights, pillow fights, scaring us with toy reptiles like creepy lizards and snakes and the list goes on.. Our house has been an art school for all these young kids. The kids took advantage of being pampered by their grandparents and mastered themselves in chirping the paint from walls, eating it in solace!!, doing all sorts of crazy experiments like mixing kitchen masalas, mud, concrete, shampoo, soap and I don’t know what else..

when we gave them the pencil, colors and papers. They used walls for scribbling instead and left their marks of identification almost everywhere 😀

My mother in law.. Their granny used to scold her grandchildren for making a mess around the house and most of all for ruining her pillows and walls!!

It was the most amusing scene to watch as all the little faces giggling at her yelling and moving to another safer zone to resume their operation! Be it living room, bedroom, hall, store, stair case or roof top.. It was every where. The marks of pencils, colors pens and crayon scribblings. Even there were little messages too like:

Iman is a bad girl! 😂😂

Mama is not nice!! 😂😂😂😂❤️

I am not talking with Muhammad etc..😂😂

All of them have grown up and out of thier childhood days. They remember as having a great time with each other. For me it’s a journey from seeing them grow from carefree toddlers into responsible youngesters moving towards achieving their goals in life.

There are no more scribbles on the wall in our house now as Arshad got them painted many times to cover them. Personally I never disliked the sketches on the walls.

As it was the means of expression for my kids. I encouraged them to be the way the want to.. To be able themselves enough to express themselves and their viewpoints openly and frankly.

When our kids grow up, they need space and time to make their stance, to stand up with confidence and boldly. We should be empathetic, silent observers, encourage them and give them space to let them be what they want to be.

They are like plant sapplings and grow when right amount of water, sunlight and air is provided. We as adults need to understand how much exposure each kid requires in order to shine out, to show themselves and in order to make their visions true.

The wall scribblings of kids reflect their mental health, engagements with pen and their little world of imagination.

The paper seems too short for their expressions in form of irregular patterns on walls. They should not be punished at that stage..

These walls can be repaired at any time but the damage done to the kid in form of punishment leaves a mark on their minds and souls forever.