In an amazing interview by Chrissy of Parental Alienation Hurts with Kimberly Pressley-Herrick a new resource for children and parents was uncovered through our program. The resource: Coloring Away Pain.

Coloring Away Pain is dedicated to bringing playful resources to children dealing with difficult life situations including divorce and parental alienation. By addressing issues such as bullying, death of a loved one, a deployed parent, or a natural disaster through the use of animal characters and easily digested stories, children often are able to open up and express themselves. The coloring books each encourage a child to explore a subject with the animal characters, answer thought provoking questions, and draw freely in addition to the standard coloring activities. Coloring Away Pain originally began in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Now, Coloring Away Pain has over 15 titles in publication and has been translated into multiple languages.

 

 EPISODE265 - Kimberly Pressley-Herrick: Coloring Away Pain [1:00:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Child therapists often use art in therapy because children often have more difficulty than adults trying to put feelings into words. It makes perfect sense for parents to be able to work with their children through various issues that might be beyond their current vocabulary and understanding. Art therapy can be used with children, adolescents and adults who are struggling with personal issues or just in search of personal growth. There are many developmental stages that children go through during their lives from scribbling at ages 2-4 to pseudo realism at ages 11-13, where the child is more critical of themselves and when they began to make decisions on their own. It is not unusual for children to go back and forth between stages according to various sources.

I personally really enjoyed the interview and see this as yet another resource that has been helping children and parents in a variety of situations. In an effort to spread awareness of these resources, we need your help and that means stepping up in your own community. How? Well the first thing is that you need to do go to their website at http://www.coloringawaypain.com and familiarize yourself with the variety of books that are available. After learning more about these resources contact your local community mental health center and ask to speak with someone that works with children and obtain their email address. Send them an email that contains the links showing all of the currently coloring books and introduce yourself briefly. This will help you build a rapport with the local office. If you don’t know which link it is, I will give you this shortcut: http://www.coloringawaypain.com/books.php.

Another project to consider is to start a crayon drive in your community, contact a small business to see if they will sponsor some books so that you can take them to child therapists and libraries, contact your local newspaper to see if they will do a story on these available resources as a public interest piece. Coloring Away Pain is a 501(c)(3) federally registered non-profit and contributions/donations made to them may qualify you for a reduction in taxes.

MORE ABOUT THE STAGES ASSOCIATED WITH ART THERAPY AND CHILDREN

Developmental aspects of children’s drawings
In 1947 Victor Lowenfeld published the book Creative and Mental Growth in which he connected intellectual growth, psychosocial stages of development, and six stages of development in children’s drawings. Cross-sectional studies conducted by Kellogg (1970) also support the conclusion that children progress in drawing through different stages that fall into predictable age groups as follows:

Scribble Stage
The scribbling stage appears at about eighteen months to two years of age. According to most researchers, this scribble is not just aimless motion created at random by the child, but demonstrates an awareness of pattern and growing hand-eye coordination. (Silk & Thomas, 1990; Lowenfeld & Brittain, 1987)

Soon after children start scribbling, they will start to name what it was they drew after they have finished drawing it. Around two years of age, children will sometimes label their drawing before they have started working on it, but if the drawing looks like something else to them, they may just change the label. Their scribbles progressively become more recognizable and separate shapes appear on the same page. At around three and a half years, children begin incorporating details like fingers on hands. (Silk & Thomas, 1990; Lowenfeld & Brittain, 1987)

“Pre-Schematic” Stage
The next stage of drawing, identified by Lowenfeld as the “Pre-Schematic” stage, typically occurs between four and seven years. In the emergence of this stage, children may draw a human figure with a circle and two dangling lines for legs. Sometimes they include a rectangular shape for trunks of bodies, and often little marks inside the circle to represent facial features. This tadpole schema is used for animals as well as people. Drawings at this level are often described as symbolic realism because a child is perfectly happy with a simple symbol of an object. (Silk & Thomas, 1990; Lowenfeld & Brittain, 1987)

“Schematic” Stage
The “Schematic” stage of drawing generally occurs at ages 7-9. Some characteristics that commonly occur in this stage are indicative of what the child is thinking versus what is actually seen by the child. An interesting phenomenon that occurs in many children’s drawings during this stage is called “x-ray drawing”. In these, a child will draw things that aren’t really visible in life. A good example of this is a man on a horse with both legs showing, even though we would really only see one. Pregnant women are often shown with a visible baby in their abdomens. Details like hands, fingers, and clothing are added with greater and greater frequency. (Silk & Thomas, 1990) As they progress further, overlapped objects, such as a tree partially obscured by the edge of a house, also emerge. The farther away something is, the smaller it will be portrayed, regardless of the real relationship in size between the objects. This indicates a growing comprehension of perspective. In many cases, children have begun using one-point perspective. (Silk & Thomas, 1990; Lowenfeld & Brittain, 1987)

“Dawning Realism” Stage
Around the age of nine or ten, children’s drawings become increasingly standardized. An emphasis on depicting how things really look can begin to frustrate them. This is referred to as the “Gang Age” or “Dawning Realism.” Children will often bring comic strip figures or commercial logos into their drawings and it is at this point that many children lose interest in drawing, as they become dissatisfied with their results. Adults often draw at this level or slightly below because this is where they ended their art education.

Eve Jarboe is a Masters of Art Therapy graduate from Marylhurst University, Oregon. For a complete reference by Eve Jarboe, visit this link: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/arts/jarboe.htm

Click Here to Bookmark/Share It

Hide Sites