Scribble Scrabble Isn't Just for Kids

My daughters were on the iPad playing with Scribble Scrabble the other day. They were doing self-portraits, and one of them was drawing super long arms that reached the top of the screen. I picked up my phone to scroll, and then thought: why don't I just scribble too?

So I opened the app and joined in on the fun.

A few minutes later, the kids were done with their self-portraits, and I was still going. Scribbling away, not once thinking about what I was trying to make.

When Did You Stop Drawing?

If you read our last post, you know that most kids stop drawing around age 9 or 10.^[1] They start wanting their drawings to look real, realize they don't know how to make that happen, and quietly stop drawing. For most people, that's the end of it. They carry "I can't draw" as a fact about themselves for the rest of their lives.

I was one of those people. I loved Scribble Scrabble time as a kid, but somewhere along the way I stopped drawing. I kept the memory of wild, colorful scribbles, but I didn't keep the habit.

Scribbling Skips All of That

The nice thing about scribbling is that there's nothing to get right. You're not trying to draw something realistic. You're just moving color around a screen. Nobody's going to look at your drawing and tell you the proportions are off. In fact, if your kids are like mine, they're going to love to see what you make!

When I sat down with Scribble Scrabble that afternoon, I wasn't trying to draw anything specific. I picked a color and started making marks. I didn't think about what I was making. I was just making, and it felt like a different kind of break than scrolling through my phone. The next thing I knew, ten minutes had passed. And those minutes didn't feel wasted.

Here's what I ended up with.

A Different Kind of Screen Time

I've written before about how kids get more out of drawing when a parent is nearby and engaged.^[2] But that afternoon I noticed the benefit goes both ways. My kids were drawing. I was drawing. We were all just sitting together making things. Nobody was asking me questions or pulling on my sleeve. We were each doing our own thing in the same space, and it was a nice, calm ten-minute break.

A lot of parents default to handing over a device and then using that quiet time to catch up on something else. I do it too. But sitting there scribbling alongside them felt better than whatever was on my phone. It wasn't productive. I didn't learn anything. I just sat there and made some colorful marks on a screen. It was honestly really nice.

Try It Yourself

Scribble Scrabble is free. You don't need an account or a tutorial. Open it up next time your kid is drawing, and see what happens when you draw too.