Communication Through Drawing

 Studies finally confirmed what I have believe about Art Therapy. 

While I was researching factors that would indicate how a child is responding to art therapy I came across a  paper: Interpreting Children's Human Figure Drawings.  Though it is intended as a basic guideline for school counselors, I found relevant material that provided insights and tips on my senior research project.  

Children tend to be receptive to art therapy. This is because children naturally use art for creative self expression, conflict exploration, and control over their realities. Art activities provide a safe and enjoyable method for children to represent their thoughts without using words. Usually children that are shy, quiet, and have speech and language difficulties, or speak a different language respond well to drawing activities. Drawing can help people communicate across cultural barriers because it allows children to communicate with others of different culture or language through their creations. Children from some Asian cultures are uncomfortable with spontaneously drawing and prefer to copy another drawing in the beginning. It will be interesting to see if this will apply to the Chinese children I will be working with at the orphanage.

When a child creates a picture, taking it from his or her mind onto a piece of paper, the drawing becomes and external object that the child can control. Interpreting the drawing helps children to accept painful thoughts and feelings and deal with internal conflicts. This allows people working with the children to develop hypotheses on how to help the children with their problems.

~Anjani