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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 215237" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>A slight digression - easy child drew a picture of herself (unprompted) at the beginning of Grade 3, virtually day 1. It was a portrait (head and shoulders) of herself in school uniform. Her face almost filled the page, her beaming smile almost filled her face. She had written a caption on a separate strip of paper and made us stick it up on the wall (caption and portrait). The caption read, "wonderful, talented, scilful..." [except at spelling] "... beautiful, intelligent."</p><p></p><p>That teacher she had then appeared to do his utmost to destroy that amazing self-esteem and to stifle her lust for learning and her drive to compete and succeed. When she looks back on her time in his class she still gets angry.</p><p></p><p>easy child 2/difficult child 2 drew amazingly detailed pictures from a very early age - detailed machines, house plans for mice or ants (complete with bunk beds, indoor swimming pools, shopping malls etc) and I remember a pirate ship and an island she drew in Kindergarten at age 4. She drew a picture of a happy monster during our interview with difficult child 1's school counsellor, when he was 6 and we were being told we were neglectful abusive parents for ignoring his needs and at the same time trying to pressure him to succeed beyond his capability (they told us he was retarded). Meanwhile they had shoved paper and crayons at his baby sister (aged not quite 3 at the time) and she drew an amazing solid-bodied multi-coloured creature with horns, ears, whorls inside the ears, eyes with pupils and iris in detail, a big smile with teeth (multi-coloured), long arms with hands and fingernails (coloured, of course), a tummy with bellybutton and feet with toenails (also painted). She then wrote her name in the corner. As I said, not quite 3 years old. </p><p></p><p>With both girls, the drawings told me that they were happy, confident, extremely capable, highly intelligent and with a strong sense of self and determination. </p><p></p><p>To the school counsellor who was trying to tell me I was being unrealistic in my expectations of my girls ("they're not that smart!") and also attacking me for driving difficult child 1 to perform (because his IQ score was in the retarded range even though his academic achievements were at the top of the class at the time) - I was able to point to easy child 2/difficult child 2 beginning another picture and say, "We're not pushing him - THAT is pushing him. He's got one older than him, and this one coming from behind. This little one even does his shoes up for him, she can tie bows and he can't. That would be enough to make any young male feel very inadequate."</p><p></p><p>difficult child 1 and difficult child 3 hate to draw, but the ability to draw well isn't always the issue. What they are looking at is what the kids draw, how they draw it (where it is on the page, how big it is, what colours are used - but you need to understand what colours are available to the child as well!) and a few other subtleties that are not really related to the child's talent.</p><p></p><p>About the colours used - I remember an article which mentioned a counsellor being very concerned at a child who only ever seemed to use brown or black crayons for his drawings; the counsellor felt this indicated something very dark and perhaps depressed in the child, to use only such bleak colours. Thankfully someone asked the child why, before too much time had been wasted on psychiatric treatment - it turned out that the kid was regularly bullied and low in the classroom pecking order, and so the only crayons he ever got to use, after all the other kids had grabbed the ones they wanted, were the black and brown ones.</p><p></p><p>Analysing a child's drawings can be a useful tool but it does need to be used as only a part of the process, to avoid perhaps seeing what isn't really there.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 215237, member: 1991"] A slight digression - easy child drew a picture of herself (unprompted) at the beginning of Grade 3, virtually day 1. It was a portrait (head and shoulders) of herself in school uniform. Her face almost filled the page, her beaming smile almost filled her face. She had written a caption on a separate strip of paper and made us stick it up on the wall (caption and portrait). The caption read, "wonderful, talented, scilful..." [except at spelling] "... beautiful, intelligent." That teacher she had then appeared to do his utmost to destroy that amazing self-esteem and to stifle her lust for learning and her drive to compete and succeed. When she looks back on her time in his class she still gets angry. easy child 2/difficult child 2 drew amazingly detailed pictures from a very early age - detailed machines, house plans for mice or ants (complete with bunk beds, indoor swimming pools, shopping malls etc) and I remember a pirate ship and an island she drew in Kindergarten at age 4. She drew a picture of a happy monster during our interview with difficult child 1's school counsellor, when he was 6 and we were being told we were neglectful abusive parents for ignoring his needs and at the same time trying to pressure him to succeed beyond his capability (they told us he was retarded). Meanwhile they had shoved paper and crayons at his baby sister (aged not quite 3 at the time) and she drew an amazing solid-bodied multi-coloured creature with horns, ears, whorls inside the ears, eyes with pupils and iris in detail, a big smile with teeth (multi-coloured), long arms with hands and fingernails (coloured, of course), a tummy with bellybutton and feet with toenails (also painted). She then wrote her name in the corner. As I said, not quite 3 years old. With both girls, the drawings told me that they were happy, confident, extremely capable, highly intelligent and with a strong sense of self and determination. To the school counsellor who was trying to tell me I was being unrealistic in my expectations of my girls ("they're not that smart!") and also attacking me for driving difficult child 1 to perform (because his IQ score was in the retarded range even though his academic achievements were at the top of the class at the time) - I was able to point to easy child 2/difficult child 2 beginning another picture and say, "We're not pushing him - THAT is pushing him. He's got one older than him, and this one coming from behind. This little one even does his shoes up for him, she can tie bows and he can't. That would be enough to make any young male feel very inadequate." difficult child 1 and difficult child 3 hate to draw, but the ability to draw well isn't always the issue. What they are looking at is what the kids draw, how they draw it (where it is on the page, how big it is, what colours are used - but you need to understand what colours are available to the child as well!) and a few other subtleties that are not really related to the child's talent. About the colours used - I remember an article which mentioned a counsellor being very concerned at a child who only ever seemed to use brown or black crayons for his drawings; the counsellor felt this indicated something very dark and perhaps depressed in the child, to use only such bleak colours. Thankfully someone asked the child why, before too much time had been wasted on psychiatric treatment - it turned out that the kid was regularly bullied and low in the classroom pecking order, and so the only crayons he ever got to use, after all the other kids had grabbed the ones they wanted, were the black and brown ones. Analysing a child's drawings can be a useful tool but it does need to be used as only a part of the process, to avoid perhaps seeing what isn't really there. Marg [/QUOTE]
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