Obsession with 'Perfection'

One of the many things, she did this summer, Lavanya attended Summer Camp. (A post on her summer vacation will follow)

Come March, every big (and am sure small too) city starts showing up hoardings/banners for Summer camp. The agenda there usually include dance, art n craft and music; few other items give n take. Since last couple of years, I have been saving myself from that frenzy. I have never had a reason to keep her engaged with anything like that. I was at home and we had loads to do.

But this summer, I gave in. Biggest reason being my job schedule, which demanded me to stay away first half of the day. Which means I needed to look for a 'good enough' alternative where she be taken care of while she spends quality time and learns something. We found this summer camp through someone's reference. Knowing Lavanya's aversion to anything strange, it required lot of efforts for us to convince her to go. She agreed and eventually we realised that she is enjoying it too. The last day of the camp was a day-long picnic to water park which was again a first time for her. She enjoyed that too (though in the beginning she had agreed to go for only 'half day picnic', which 6 year old does this?)

As their camp drew to closure, all the children were given away all the craft items they had made during the span of 20 odd days. You can find the pics below.

Glued Rangoli:

Ship made out of shoe-box:

Pot painting and paper-flowers:

Abstract painting:
Ice cream cone:

Photo frame:

Vegetable printing:
Glass painting:
Exhibition that she arranged before her father arrives:

Now you can call me whatever names, but I know what my daughter can do and what she can not. I asked her did you do all this, she said 'no, my teacher helped me'. For example, she was given vegetable cut out (which is fair) and asked to make shape of a necklace. The idea of 'necklace' , the outline everything was done by teachers, using okra prints was also teacher's idea. Same was the case with ice-cream cone using cotton balls or a shoe box. She painted the photo-frame but the glitter-spots were done by teacher. I asked her why she didn't do that part, she said, she was worried about spoiling it.

What I was left wondering was, what exactly Lavanya gained out of this? Besides a (phony) feel-good factor?

Of-course I am not only blaming those Summer-camp organisers. They of-course had to justify hefty money they had charged us by producing neat-looking stuff. But we do this mistake all the time. All the children's toys come with readymade guide so that they can make perfect things. With clay, Lavanya's favourite activity is to roll rotis, mix all the colours together in anticipation of 'new' colour and create some weird shapes. The moment she mixes all the colours together (to form a black-brown lump) everyone pounces on her and forces her to use moulds so that she creates perfect fish or a duck.

Yesterday we bought her a 'top' - again a perfect one, speed/performance guranteed. All the drawing books come with pre-drawn printed diagram in which children have to colour. Sometimes even colours are mentioned there and children have to exactly colour according to that.

Why nothing is left to their interpretation? What would happen if they colour elephant pink and frog yellow? What would happen if she uses her fingers instead of brushes to paint? Why am I teaching her that everything around her has to be 'perfect'? Why am I teaching her that every question will have easy answers?