Turns out, I simply hadn't armed him with the proper tool.
I have a No Scissors Until You're Five rule, mostly because I don't feel like supervising anyone under the age of 5 with sharp objects. But Caleb was tired of having to beg someone to cut out all the trucks and sharks he was drawing, and I felt sorry for the poor guy. So I gave him Abby's kid scissors and let him have at it.
It was awful.
He may as well have been trying to cut a straight line with his eyes closed, using only his toes. Nothing he cut out even remotely resembled what he was trying to make. I watched him closely, to see if I could find some reason for his total lack of coordination.
He held the paper in his right hand, and awkwardly gripped the scissors in his left. He was holding them upside down, and compensating for the difficulty of upside down cutting by contorting his left arm so that his wrist pointed backward toward his elbow as he craned his neck to see over his right arm to what he was trying to trim.
Poor little lefty. We headed out to buy him some left handed scissors pretty immediately. I never knew just how critical they were before.
Back at home with his specialized scissors, he cut and sliced and trimmed like a champ. His sharks were shaped like sharks. His trucks had rounded wheels. Turns out, he's actually pretty skilled at this whole Cutting With Scissors thing.
I guess it's time to amend my rules a little.
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