Understand Your Children through their Drawings
Art as therapy today
Art therapy has become popular and is gradually gaining a formal recognition in Singapore in recent years. Counsellors, therapists and psychologists are beginning to employ drawings done by children to understand their subconscious mind at work.
Although many informal talks and workshops on art therapy have been conducted in the past several years, art as therapy was first popularized by the Family Resource and Training Centre (FRTC) offering short two- to three-day workshops on expressive as well as diagnostic art therapy in 2002. Soon other forms of art therapy such as, mandala art therapy, dialogic-diagnostic art therapy, art logotherapy and art nootherapy, were also introduced.
Art making as a developmental process
According to Cathy Malchiodi, a board-certified art therapist in the United States, art making for children is a process that brings together many different experiences to create something new, personal, and unique. The process of making a drawing requires the child to choose, translate, and arrange lines, shapes, and colours to convey a thought, feeling, event, or observation, synthesizing numerous components involving content, style, form and composition.
In actuality, viewing drawings as mystifying is probably more helpful to children in the long run, since at least one is looking at children’s work with an open mind. Seeing children’s art expressions simply as a series of components and diagnostic characteristics is much more problematic and does not take into consideration the context in which they were created or the possibility of multiple meanings.
According to Dr Robert Winter, chairman of the art department and coordinator of the art therapy program at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina, at around 18 months to 2½ years of age, children mostly feel the world through body movements, and they can share these feelings with others through play and drawings, for instance. A careful observation at a child’s drawings can tell us much about his/her development, and can reveal much about his/her development, and can even provide us with clues to his/her well-being. Parents and teachers can track the development of visual-spatial perception and fine motor control by observing the progression of children’s artwork from loose random lines drawn with crayons or colour pencils to controlled lines drawn with thick markers or 2B pencils.
In other words, even before their language ability permits them to interact verbally and freely, young children can use their artwork to convey important message to their caregivers, i.e., parents and teachers. However, one question we may want to ask: “Can a child’s scribbles alert his/her parents to potentially dangerous situations?” According to Dr Winter, it is extremely difficult to detect precise danger signals. However, a child who does not express an interest in scribbling at preschool stage, say before 4 years old, may in itself be a sign of a developmental delay.
Between ages 3½ and 4½ years, children begin to name their scribbles (e.g., daddy, mummy, house, tree) and parents as well as teachers should take note. As children gain a wider understanding of the world around them, the elements in their drawings will concretize and take clearer forms known as schemata (e.g., a human schema, a tree schema, a house schema). Whatever the children name, it is important that we do not put words in their mouth. Instead of interpreting their drawings, we should ask them, “Please tell me more about your drawing?” Children are often more comfortable describing their drawings. This gives them a sense of accomplishment and success in the artwork that they have taken pride to complete.
In addition, it is also important to note the choice of colours that children use in their drawings. Children at preschool level use colour for its emotional and contrasting appeal. Whenever a crisis sets in, the first thing we should look out for is colour. For instance, if a child who has previously enjoyed many bright colours exhibits a sudden and extended rejection of those colours in favour of black or grey, the child might be in a state of denial or apathy. The problem can be traced down to the child’s attempt to cope with some kind of fear or phobia or others.
Interpretation of children’s drawings
Children are by nature expressive people. Their messages, especially the unspoken ones, can be found in their drawings. In interpreting children’s drawings, it is important to remember that patterns of drawing (e.g., horizontal line scribbles, diagonal zig-zag scribbles) are the key. According to Dr Winter, patterns are manifested after extended periods of time, about six months to a year at least, before we jump too quickly into our conclusion only to misinterpret what the child has drawn. For example, if a child draws in black and white, it does not mean he/she is disturbed. However, if the child frequently rejects other colours in favour of black, grey and white, it might suggest a problem that is worth investigating through some form of individual counseling with the child.
Our observation and interpretation of graphic symbols observed in children’s drawings can tell us many things that the children themselves may not want to tell us directly. Some clear warning signs in drawings are as follow:
Ø Exceptionally big ears without earrings may suggest verbal abuse;
Ø Big hands suggest aggressiveness or physical abuse;
Ø Mouth with a long slit suggests an anxious, uncomfortable child;
Ø Absence of a mouth may be a sign of a child’s inability to communicate;
Ø Empty eyes (without pupils) suggest that the child has difficulty relating to the reality around him/her;
Ø Absence of arms or arms are tucked behind the body suggests a sense of helpless or powerlessness; and
Ø Jagged teeth often indicate a tendency towards aggressive behavior and often coupled with other serrated graphic symbols such as, spiked fingers, feet and hair.
Finally, I must stress here that the key to proper interpretation of children’s drawings is to look for patterns that manifest themselves over time, not isolated incidents. It is still best that such interpretations as illustrated above should be left to the professionals trained in diagnostic art therapy.
Copyright © 2006 Dr Noel K.H. Chia. All rights reserved. see Disclaimer