It's Art Therapy

So lots of you probably saw me writing about this on my Facebook page the other day, but I want to write about it here, so everyone can see, and to document the method for the future.

What I'm referring to is how we draw pictures with Maeve to help her talk about her feelings.  This generally occurs when she is out-of-control sad or upset, or in deep tantrum mode.  On Monday when we drew some emotion pictures, she had been moving between an angry tantrum and despondent crying for an hour, and I was at my wit's end.  So we sat down in front of the dry erase board on her easel and I asked her what kind of Maevie to draw.

I drew a sad Maevie, with lots of tears, per her request.  I asked Maeve why the picture was so sad, and she told me why.  I asked her how we could make the picture feel better, and then was instructed to draw Maeve's special blanket, Basbo.  Then I asked her, does the picture of Maevie feel better?  And she said yeah, and that I could erase the tears and change the frown to a smile. 

Then I drew a little self-portrait, and said Mommy was there to help Maeve feel better, too, and that Mommy was smiling because she loves Maeve.  This was sufficient to get the kid completely calm and ready to go to the store, which after an hour of tantrums kind of seemed like a miracle.

I think somehow, drawing about how she feels gives her a little distance from the immediacy of those emotions.  It's kind of simplifying, the frown and the tears and the smile, but it seems to communicate the basic feelings somehow.  And for the rest of that day, when she'd get upset, I'd ask her, how can we find your smiley face?  Once she suggested something within reason that wasn't ice-cream based, we went with it.  So there you have it, a pretty useful tool.  I should add that the whole idea of drawing about her emotions was my brilliant husband's idea, and I give him all the credit.

She insisted I draw 'boogies' in her nose, because she'd been crying.  Accuracy, please, Momma.