Why Children Paint

Consideration from child psychology :

Translated Anthony Swan (England)
Understanding children's heart with pictures: From
"Why children draw"
Kayoko Sato, Ken Terao / Reference

 

At first the child is in the mother's womb and is as one with the mother. When born the child will exist as a single individual.

By breast feeding and being held a mother may manage to reassure even a sick child.

The act of painting may be seen as a compensation for the loneliness that can exist when separated from their mother.

At a young age a child's drawings appear meaningless messed up smearings done simply to try to attract the mother's attention. Of course the child does not do this intentionally but as an unconscious act.

When a child is around 3-4 years old, and a younger sibling is born, then the child may start to change their behaviour and suddenly become unruly. This may be observed both at home and at school. This is quite common.

Smearing the drawing or painting is an act of unconsciously seeking the attention of their mother and trying to restore the separation caused by the new birth.

In other words, the child recognises the new position of the brother or sister. While they may think their sibling cute, in emotional terms they are very much upset that they are deprived of their mother's full attention

These conflicting emotions weigh heavily with the child and are reflected in the smudges and smearings of their painting.

The child is in a state of reorganising their mental equilibrium. But adults looking at their messy jumbled up drawings may comment that the picture is poor and that the images are not very good.


Child's heart and picture

A picture freely drawn by a child is an unconscious projection, and the unconscious psychology is directly displayed on the screen. In fact, the child's heart is hidden in the picture. In other words, please think of it as a radiograph of children's heart.

In other words, the child's starting picture is the manifestation of intellectual interest and the divergence of various emotions, and the manifestation of feelings and rebellion that he wants to spoil. And childlen is trying to escape from the rebellion.

Kid's Spoiling is sought beauty, embraced by beauty, and heightened by the feelings of love, and rebellion and aggression are considered to be the process of developing and innovating new things.

In this way, the dependent attitude and the aggressive attitude are eliminated and improved only in the act of painting, and it is only through such an appropriate process that personality in which the intellect, emotion, and will are harmonized then the personality will be formed.