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Family Daze
Child's artwork could alert parents to dangers lurking
By Debbie Farmer
It seems you can't open a magazine these days without reading about a new way to analyze your child. I usually skip those articles since I don't see any point to know ahead of time that my child may have an inherent character flaw and will grow up to be an antisocial, psychopathic mass murder. I'd much rather be surprised.
But one day I was reading the latest parenting magazine and came across an article about deciphering a preschooler's artwork to alert parents to potentially dangerous situations. Now, deep down I know that a bunch of crayon scribbles can't tell you whether to start saving for your son's college tuition or prison bail, but given my husband's family history, I figured one teeny comparative analysis couldn't hurt.
So I did what any other concerned mother would do--went home and found my son's latest paintings from preschool.
According to the article, the characteristics that would tell me the most about my child's overall psychological health were the size of the objects in the picture, his attention to detail and the amount of miniature chalk outlines.
Unfortunately, I couldn't tell much from my son's artwork since he preferred to express his creativity in only one color: black. But I wasn't worried. There was nothing wrong with a picture of solid black. After all, maybe he had a flair for painting night scenes or all of the other colors in the easel had dried up. Or maybe he just liked black. After all, it is slimming.
To be on the safe side, I handed him a piece of paper and a box of crayons.
"Let's draw Mommy a nice little picture, OK?" I said.
Fifteen minutes later, I knew I had nothing to worry about. My son handed me a picture of what looked like several colorful balloons floating underneath a cheery, yellow sun.
"What a great job," I said. "Can you tell me about your drawing?"
"It's a big scary monster that wants to crush all of the buildings and then stomp on everybody's car and then pull out squishy guts and ... ."
"That's nice, Honey." I snatched the picture away.
Although the article didn't mention how to analyze man-eating monsters, I had a feeling it couldn't be all that good.
I needed some reassurance, so I began slyly checking out the artwork on all of my friend's refrigerators during play dates. I soon realized that not only my son, but also his entire circle of friends, were social deviants.
At first I thought about trying to warn them about drawings of footless stick figures and heads with large ears protruding and the rest of it. After all, I'd be doing them a favor.
But how could I possibly tell Robby's mother that his picture of a cute little bunny with no mouth means he has an inability to communicate? Or tell Peter's mom that, according to the jagged teeth and spiked fingers in his self-portrait, that he has a tendency for aggressive behavior? And how could I break it to Brandon's mom that she might as well stop wasting her time on things like soccer practice and gymboree and just drive him straight to the local high-security penitentiary since that's where he's bound to end up anyway?
So I went home and tossed the article into the trash can.
Sometimes it's just better that way.
Debbie Farmer can be contacted at familydaze@home.com.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
