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By
Lillian Latham
Child art therapy involves
different practices in education, rehabilitation and
psychotherapy. Child art therapy is used as a means for
children and
their art therapist to not only visualize the
unconscious but also to eventually recognize it on a
conscious level. Used to promote healing, art on a
therapeutic level is used in many settings to benefit
the child.
One of
these major settings involve the school, where the art
therapist helps the child with internal conflicts, using
the child's artwork to understand the conflicts that the
child may not
be aware of on a conscious level. The art therapist, the
teaching and counseling staff and the child's parents
and family members are all involved in the effort to
help the child.
Many
times, the students who are involved within the art
therapy setting are special education students who are
having difficulty. In this case, the
child art
therapy is used for conditions such as learning
disabilities, emotional problems and disturbances,
behavior disorders, and even physical handicaps that are
the result of impaired gross and fine mother control.
The Child
Art Therapist must have the education to recognise the
intellectual and psychosocial development of the
individual child in the six stages development in the
child. These six stages fall within certain age groups:
The Scribble Stage - occurs
at 18 months to two years of age.
This age group demonstrates
the ability to be aware of patterns, utilizing hand-eye
coordination.
The Pre-Schematic Stage -
occurs at four to seven years.
The
child may draw
human figures with circles, and two dangling lines for
legs.
The
Schematic Stage - occurs at seven to nine years.
The characteristics of this
age group show what the child is thinking vs. what they
are actually seeing.
The Dawning Realism Stage -
occurs at age nine.
At this
stage demonstrating how things "really look" become
important, which can cause excessive frustration.
When using
child art
therapy, the child is usually given five or six art
directions by the art therapist. They will be asked to
represent the child's perception of themselves, their
family, their school, or any aspect of their
environment. When this is done, the drawings will be
evaluated by the art therapist, who will also look at
the child's academic history, their personal
development, and their family. Many things need to be
evaluated--the child's culture, their home life, or
their financial situation, as drawings differ across the
spectrum. One thing that has been noticed is when
learning disabled children are found to have low
intelligence measurements on standardized tests, they
are significantly more advanced in creative and visual
intelligence. The result of art therapy may show that
adding a visual component may be needed to enhance their
learning.
More
Information...
About the
Author
Lillian Latham, the author
of a book on alternative therapies which can be found at
www.besthealthylives.com, has long been interested
in non traditional medicines and therapies. |
