Artist Kid / The Adult's Part

Draw alongside them, never for them, and stop demonstrating.

Your own hesitation about making things is more contagious than anything you say.

The single most effective thing an adult can do is sit down at the same table with their own sheet and make something for themselves. Not a demonstration. Not a model. Not a helpful example of how a horse is done. Something you are actually interested in, made at your own pace, with no commentary. This does two things at once. It makes the activity normal, something people in this house do rather than something children are given to occupy them, and it takes your eyes off the child's paper, which is worth a great deal on its own.

The urge to demonstrate is strong and should be treated as a warning sign rather than an impulse to follow. When you draw a correct version beside a child's version, you have staged a comparison, and the child will lose it. If they ask you to draw something for them, notice that the request usually appears after a period of adult correction, and answer it sideways: draw your own thing, not theirs, or ask what they want it to do rather than what it should look like. Never take the pencil out of their hand to fix a line.

There is one more thing to watch, and it lives entirely in the adult. A great many people announce, cheerfully and often, that they cannot draw. Said in front of a child, repeatedly, this teaches that drawing is a fixed ability that people either have or lack, and that a reasonable adult response to lacking it is to stop. Children absorb that framing completely. You do not have to become skilled. You have to be visibly willing to make something imperfect in front of them without apologising for it, which is a much lower bar and considerably more useful.