Art Therapy At Home
Encourage Your Kids to Draw During the Pandemic Quarantine is reminding me how much I love to draw. Last week, I led an Embers on Zoom for campers at our virtual camp Hometown Stomping Ground all about drawing and mark making as a form of expression and therapy.
On the call I only asked for one thing: that everyone suspend all judgement of their drawings, to refrain from using words like good, bad, ugly or pretty. I asked them to mindfully enjoy the “felt sense” of mark making and to share any feelings, thoughts, or ideas they had while drawing.
It is no surprise that kids are way better at this than adults. Many adults have lost contact with the therapeutic purpose of art making. Instead, adults often see art as decoration in a home or artifact in a museum. Drawing or mark making for adults or older kids can often be frustrating, intimidating, or even scary. We become consumed by the product and lose track of the process as well as the ability to externally map our interior selves.
Encouraging your kids to draw during quarantine has potential benefits for them, and for you. Here are three reasons why, and three ideas of how to get started.
Reason 1: Understand and make sense of inner experiences and emotional change. Before starting camp with Jack, I studied Painting and Drawing at SUNY Purchase. I have always known the mysterious power drawing and mark making has had for me in regulating my emotions and processing experiences. Studying Social Work at Columbia these past two years have given me a different way to look at art making and drawing through a clinical lense especially when it comes to working with children.
Art therapist Harriet Wadeson talks about art therapy through the Spatial Matrix, or the ability of art to communicate relationships using shape, color, and line. Art has the ability to contain paradoxical elements and helps people integrate and synthesize conflicting experiences and emotions.
The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted all of our routines, ruined plans, and jumbled the structures and systems that facilitate our lives. I find myself wrecked between feelings of frustration, confusion, and anger. It is hard for me to explain my quickly changing emotions or rationally label my own thoughts, feelings, and actions. For kids this is especially confusing. Encouraging drawing helps us to translate feelings and emotions. That leads to my second reason that drawing right now might be helpful for you kids.
Reason 2: Find healthy ways to communicate. Art is a powerful and effective form of communication. The sharpness or softness of a scribble, the frantic or smooth quality of a line, the use of color, the position of the drawing on the paper...these are all ways to communicate a feeling or emotion without saying a word. Therapy is a Greek word that means “ to be attentive to”. As a parent or caregiver, being attentive to your child's drawings during the time of coronavirus could be a simple yet effective way to see how they are processing this uncertain and confusing time we are in together. Having children explain their drawings or make meaning from the drawings symbols, colors and shapes gives you a window into their mind in a way that conversation might not.
Drawings also provide a visual record of thoughts and feelings and can be an important reference when processing experiences later. The permanent quality of art allows you to look back and notice emerging patterns and themes over time.
Reason 3: Emotional release. Lastly, art making is relaxing and mood altering. Creative activity has been shown to increase the brain chemical serotonin, which when lacking is linked to depression. Mark making such as drawing or painting as a process is a sensory filled experience. Children learn through their senses according to psychologist Eugene Gendlin. Critical neural connections and pathways are forged when children draw. Drawing with your child builds an emotional connection and positive memories which are especially important with the stress and anxiety we are all collectively experiencing. Here are 3 therapy related art making activities to try with your kids during quarantine: Blind Contour Drawing- Draw a person or an object without looking at your paper or picking up your writing utensil. This exercise helps you mindfully focus on what you are looking at and what it feels like to trace an image with your eyes and translate it to the paper.
Drawing a Self Portrait - The ultimate form of self expression is to draw a picture of yourself. Use a mirror or just colors, shapes, or symbols that you feel like reflect you.
Draw Quarantine- Everyone is processing the current state of the world differently, asking kids to draw what they think of in terms of quarantine might give you, and them insight into the moments, experiences, images and people that are making an impact on their perception of the world right now.
You do not need to be an artist or feel “good” at drawing to draw with your kids or to be “attentive” like a therapist would. Let yourself take a break from the housework, the job work, the parenting work and explore what is in your own head and that of your kids through drawing together.
To learn more about the author Laura Kriegel or Stomping Ground you can email her at Laura@campstompingground.org or visit campstompingground.org.
References:
Kriegel, L. (2020, April 14). Art Therapy at Home. Retrieved August 17, 2020, from https://campstompingground.org/blog/2020/4/14/art-therapy-at-home