The Complete Guide to Children's Drawings: Accessing Children‘s Emotional World through their Artwork. Michal Wimmer

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      Figure 1-25:Drawing with pastel crayons

      Pastel crayons invite the child to get dirty as part of the creative process, and provide an experience of depth in addition to the color variety. Thus, children who prefer pastel will work in several layers and explore this tool’s potential to conceal and reveal.

      Gouache paints, like all types of finger paints, offer the perfect sensory experience. Whether the child uses a brush or his fingers, the soft sense of paint flowing over the page offers a combined sensory-kinesthetic-emotional sensation. Naturally, painting in gouache requires the child to cope with neatness issues. Some children will refuse to use these paints at all, because they don’t want to be messy.

      When working with these children, it is important to give them the protections they need (for example, by giving them a towel to wipe their hands), but it is also important to invite them to continue exploring the sensory experience, which in many cases can also lead to behavioral change.

      Children who show clear preference for gouache could use this experience to learn how to effortlessly take control of the entire page area, but also to maintain its boundaries and improve their gross motor skills.

      What to Look for in Children’s Drawings?

      For the child, drawing is a daily language and additional medium of communication. The child has never been taught how to draw before, and he advances through the developmental stages freely and intuitively. As in any language, the language of art combines social codes that make it understandable and “spoken”, together with private codes borrowed from the child’s inner world which mark his artwork as unique.

      In order to gain a broad perspective on the child’s inner world and self-image based on his drawings, I recommend analyzing at least 25 samples drawn in various techniques (gouache, pastel, markers, pencils, etc.). Analyzing fewer drawings will provide limited indications, representing passing moods rather than broad trends. Accordingly, it is also important to analyze drawings made over a period of at least six months, so as to provide a clear picture of the child’s emotional world and enable comparison to earlier periods.

      Interpreting the drawing requires assessing a wide variety of phenomenon, from the way the drawing has been executed and the child’s various artistic choices, through his use of the page area, line pressure and color selection, to analysis of the child’s verbalizations during and after the drawing.

      The drawing environment is also significant to the diagnosis: children draw in different styles and with different materials at home and at kindergarten. Drawing at kindergarten next to other children is naturally different than drawing at home, alone or with a parent. Bear in mind that kindergarten drawings are not always spontaneous, and that the teacher often invites the child to the table and focuses him on a particular subject (such as a holiday or a season). In these cases, it is important to compare such artwork to spontaneous drawings made by the child at home.

      Free choice is essential to the success of our interpretation. It is important for the child to choose the page size, drawing tools and colors. This will contribute to his free and authentic expression, and paint a more reliable picture of his subjective emotional world.

      Having met these conditions, you must check whether the child uses a dominant hand or whether he is still switching hands. You must also check whether he prefers a certain position (lying, standing and even walking). The answers to those questions have direct bearing to the degree of pressure applied to the drawing tool and the angles from which the various elements on the page are drawn.

      Finally, you must know the child’s exact age (in months) in order to assess his developmental level. In younger ages, children may achieve developmental leaps every month, so that frequent analysis of their artwork combined with awareness of their precise age will provide clearer indications as to their emotional state.

      The drawings shed light not only on the child’s inner world, but also on his social environment and the various influences of the adults in his life – from his parents and wider family, through his teachers to people he met on the street or saw on TV; all of them shape the child’s worldview and all will leave their mark on his art.

      How to Respond to Children’s Drawings?

      As you pick up your child from kindergarten at the end of the day, you see him bursting enthusiasm as he presents you with his most recent masterpiece. You look at the drawing and don’t know how to react. At first (as well as second) glance, it simply looks like a senseless doodle. And yet, since you want to encourage your child, you mumble things like, “Wow! This is the most beautiful drawing I’ve ever seen!” In most cases, that’s all there is to it: the child seems pleased, and the parent is happy, having succeeded in the positive reinforcement task.

      This triple encounter – parent, child and drawing – offers a splendid opportunity to conduct a meaningful conversation about the child’s inner world. But first of all, the parent has to be truly available to attend to the child’s artwork.

      As in other parenting situations, this is the first question you need to ask yourselves: “Do I have the energy and patience to totally be with my children?” Granted, it is important to teach our child that we cannot be available to them around the clock; as adults, we have desires, needs and occupations that are independent of his existence. On the other hand, as parents, we are aware of the child’s needs and willing to channel them to other times when we are more available. It is essential to fulfill the promise and “reconvene the meeting” at a later time, instead of just blurting “this is so beautiful”, without even gazing at the drawing.

      When you first look at the drawing, it is important that you refer to what you can see – even if it’s just a scribble consisting of seemingly random blots of paint. You can say things like: “I see you drew over the entire page… pressed hard on the marker… used lots of colors/only two colors… drew many lines”. These specific references indicate to the child that the parent is indeed observing his drawing and noticing every little detail he made such an effort to produce.

      Naturally, you can also ask the child to explain what he drew, but it’s just as important to respect his answer, rather than badger him with questions such as “Why this way and not otherwise”, or suggest ideas for additional elements. Thus, when your child paints the sky green or red, there is no need to correct him out of fear his perception may be flawed. The drawing is a window onto his inner world, and there is no reason to assume that he is confused about the world outside.

      When observing the drawing, bear in mind that it is also a product of his motor development. As such, it is not always pregnant with symbolic meaning. Sometimes your child simply enjoys the process of creating by way of manipulating objects in the world and leaving his mark.

      Next, you should wait before complimenting the child, and try to hold a real conversation about the drawing. More often than not, your child will be happy to talk about it. In the conversation, you can mediate between the child’s world and the world of art, and draw his attention to the fact that he loves a particular color that appears time and again both in his drawings and in his room, for example. Invite the child to tell you what he drew, whether verbally or simply by showing your interest through body language and curious eyes.

      During the schematic СКАЧАТЬ