My introverted thinker daughter is somewhere between 7 and 10 years old when she says that she wants to paint a flower.

My mother was an artist, watercolors, etchings, oils, lithograph, drawing... not acrylics. But I learned a lot just watching her and I always have art supplies.

I get watercolor paper and paints and water and set my daughter at the kitchen table.

The IT eyes the paper and doesn't touch it.

I wait for a while. "Do you need something else?" I ask.

"Yes." she says.

I get a flower from the yard and put it in a vase.

"Here. You have a model."

She sits frowning at it.

After a while, I try something else.

"Here is one of my mother's watercolors. You can copy it." My mother painted lots of flowers.

My daughter does not stop frowning. After a while she says, "No, that doesn't help." I take the watercolor away and the vase away and wait.

She brings me a painting of a flower. She is all smiles and satisfied. She explains: "I wanted it to be perfect, but I knew I couldn't paint the real flower perfectly. I couldn't copy Grandmother Helen's painting perfectly either. So I painted a flower that I imagined and one that I could do perfectly."

Problem solved.

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