Like me, I’m sure you have found strange personality quirks in your children. I’ve already documented my youngest son’s obsession with DVDs – not watching them, but playing with the actual disks. His obsession is weird, annoying, and expensive, but probably not as frustrating as my two-year-old daughter’s obsession with writing instruments and causing as much destruction as possible with them.
Exhibit A: the hallway wall
Exhibit B: the front door
I take and hide them from her constantly. I’ve loaded the top shelves in our kitchen cabinets with crayons, pens, and pencils. But, it doesn’t matter. For every destructive crayon or pen that I’ve snatched from her, two more appear to take its place. I swear she makes a wave of her hand and they appear.
I caught her in the act again today.
She doesn’t discriminate either. She draws on anything and everything. See those blue lines on her legs? They aren’t varicose veins. That paper she’s defiling? A bill from the dentist.
My older kids tried to come to the rescue. Wiping the marks off the wall simply does not work. However, they discovered that a pencil eraser can actually remove both crayon and pen when nothing else seemed to work.
Clare was particularly destructive on this section of wall. You can see the eraser marks where we removed some old scratchings, but Clare wasn’t happy finding her beautiful art erased. She promptly found another pen and put some fresh lines on top of the erased ones.
Today, she tried to distract me placing parts of her half-eaten lunch in strange places, sending me on a hunt while she ruined some more wall.
Hot dog on the carpet? Check.
Banana in the empty diaper box? Check.
More wall art? You know it.
She doesn’t feel as guilty as she looks. Trust me.
I really don’t want to suppress my daughter’s desire for artistic expression, but my house looks like Crayola’s newest test facility. Does hypnosis work to convince your kids that writing instruments are evil devices and they will be cursed when touching them?
Until next time – Chris
Active Dad at Home 
Your daughter’s great: so evil so young! My 2 year old only has access to chalk and crayons that wipe off easily, but she likes writing on dentist bills too! We have a stupid bookshelf at floor level and since she could drag herself there she’s spent hours pulling ALL of them out and tearing pages out of the most expensive ones. Not quite as destructive, but evil nonetheless…
Evil is a good way to put it. Evil and clever. She’s learned from the best (three older siblings). If there is something she can move, stack, and/or climb on to reach something she wants, she will do it. She’s also destroyed her fair share of books, just like your daughter. Thanks for sharing!