Understanding Your Child Through Drawing

Even before our child is born, we imagine them. What they will look like, what their touch will feel like, and what their sensations will be. These fantasies and longing for the child yet to be born are important and help with bonding from this very stage. Sometimes the child is born and is exactly as we imagined, sometimes it takes time until the baby and parents adjust to each other and harmony is created, and sometimes we gradually learn to accept the gap between fantasy and reality.

The same is true when imagining a child's drawing: we imagine a "beautiful" and clear drawing with figures, a house, colors, and a shining sun. The path to these familiar and recognizable drawings is long. They are not immediately like that. First come the scribbles. Those that look like "doodles." In fact, behind the lines hides an entire world. Understanding that every line in a drawing stems from emotional and cognitive development will help us appreciate and genuinely marvel at children's drawings, starting from the most primary creations…

If we understand, for example, that a vertical line differs in meaning from a horizontal one, or that the scribble didn't just turn into a separate circle one day but was born from deep emotional and physiological development — thus symbolizing the emotional "self" being born and representing a very important developmental stage in psychological growth — we will be able to truly marvel at their scribbles and developments, even the smallest ones. The genuine admiration, the acceptance of what was drawn without needing familiar and recognizable drawings at this stage, will contribute to the child's joy and confidence. They will feel valued, accepted as they are, and their love for drawing lines and marks that express their abilities, emotions, and thoughts will grow. They will want to scribble more and more… Thus, their drawing level will also rise, and their other mental abilities will develop. Our supportive responses, born from genuine understanding, deeply and importantly influence the child's development.

Understanding the meanings of the emerging and changing line provides a tool for understanding the child's inner world, helps strengthen their self-confidence, deepen the bond between parent and child, and develop their graphic and mental abilities. So simple and yet so much…