We stand on my stoop, my neighbor and I, talking about art, and children, and why it can be so hard to teach your children that for which you have passion and, perhaps, talent. My neighbor is an artist trying to give some art direction to her 11-year-old daughter. It's not going so well.

I remember my mother, a professional musician and singer, trying to teach me to sing. I stubbornly refused to learn, although I thought I wanted to, and soon mama and I were caught up in a head-to-head struggle from which neither of us could escape. Mama threw up her hands, and that was the end of my singing lessons.

I'm thinking, too, of "parallel play," that circumstance where two children play alongside but not with each other. This way of playing with a child, companioning but not watching, is the way I learned to do art therapy; it can also be a way of teaching art that is learning at its most relaxed. The experience is shared, the activity is spontaneous. We learn by playing.