The Soul life of the child

The soul diary of the child. The importance of a child’s drawing.

For a long time we have tried to understand the pictorial expression of human beings as a means to deeply understand an inner self.

When I watch the little one draw, she may scribble an image she may go to great lengths to produce an image that feels just right to her. She may randomly choose colour, she may take great care in colour choice. One consistency in her work and the drawings of every child is that children express many things in drawings, their hopes, dreams. wishes, expectations also their worries, hurt, anxiety and fears. Children draw their experienced reality linked to their past and future.

Edeltraub Wiebe, in “Kinder haben ein Recht darauf, verstanden zu werden! Ausdrucksformen der Kinder—sehen und verstehen” (PP) says

“The “purpose” of children’s drawing is simply the joy that children feel and in their wish to “express” themselves. To express themselves means to come out from under some kind of pressure. [In the German, there is a play on the words “Druck”—pressure, stress, and “sich ausdrucken”—to express oneself.'] The perception of stress is not necessarily to be equated with an experience of being burdened! More often it is due to the wish of the person to free himself from feelings or thoughts, to be able to be open for new perceptions and activities. One could also say: Children’s drawings enhance and free [the child] from feelings, unburden one from thoughts that have not been worked through, and help create the possibility to be able to confront one’s actual living situation with renewed forces

Children’s pictures are an extremely valuable document to help enable one to understand the child’s environment, to discover the child’s inner values, and to infer pedagogical arrangements that might be called for. We should always meet all pictures of a child with appreciation and respect, as he is entrusting us with his “soul diary.”

At home we honour this expression, with lots of writing materials, with notepads and sketchbooks available all the time. Materials outside such as chalk allow expression to take place when needed