H's colouring nightmare

I must have underestimated how much H dislike colouring. I know he's not a big fan of colouring but his procrastination when it comes to finishing off his homework that requires colouring is driving me mad!

I'm not sure when this all started. He's never been unwilling to colour, in fact when in a good mood, he will try to colour in nicely. But recently, I realised that he's just unwilling to pick up those colour pencils. Over the weekend while I was supervising him with his homework, he did eveything quickly but left out sections requiring colouring.

"Can you please finish off your homework? Just a little more, you only need to colour the boxes."

No reply and went off to play with his sister!

"Come back H! You can play later, just this little bit more..."

H came back, and sat there playing with his colour pencils instead (pretending they were stick men fighting).

Me getting impatient, "You better finish it now cos I'm not going to remind you again. You can go to school and explain to the teacher why you didn't finish!"

Reluctantly he started colouring, but instead of just filling the boxes with one colour, he had to draw stripes. Sigh, I was really losing patience. And he was doing it really slowly as well, getting distracted all the time. I just couldn't sit there any longer and walked away before I snapped.



When I came back after 1/2 hour, H still wasn't done. Instead he proudly showed me what he did, "See mommy!". H drew the ants and bees game (ipad game) on paper, complete with different levels some more! *slaps forehead*



"Very nice dear, but why haven't you finished your homework? No need to do in colourful stripes lah, just use one single colour so that you can do it faster!"

"In school you don't waste time like that ok else your teacher will say you're slow in colouring!"



Opps, blurted out too fast!

"My teacher didn't say I am slow in colouring. She said I was lousy in colouring."

I wonder if that's the reason he's rejecting colouring. It's terrible how teachers make such comments even if it's unintentional cos you never know how those words can affect a kid's subconscious mind.

"Well it's ok to be lousy, not everyone's good at everything, but with practice you can be good too..."

H finally sat down to finish off his homework. He coloured the rest of the boxes with one single colour and finished in no time. See it's not that hard. I'm not sure why he just refused to do it.