Understand your child's moods, feelings and struggles through his artistic creations.

There are many developmental stages that children go through during their lives, from scribbling to pseudo realism at ages 11-13, where the child is more critical of themselves and when they began to make decisions on their own.

Self-discovery

Art therapy uses the creation of art to help people discover their feelings. It can increase verbal expressions and can redirect expressions into productive forms. Art therapy has often been successfully used with children or adolescents struggling with personal issues.

Visual expression

Art and creativity provides a visual and verbal approach to accessing and addressing needs. As a natural mode of communication for children, it is a means of externalizing the complexities of emotional pain. Children rarely resist the art-making process because it offers ways to express themselves that are less threatening than strictly verbal means. Drawings made by children can thus help us understand concerns and issues that they cannot express verbally.

Art therapy is valuable for all students, but especially for those experiencing difficulty at school because of personal crises or disabilities. Such students may be in regular education, special education or alternative education programs. In the art and creativity process, children are encouraged to visually represent their thoughts and feelings, such as conflicts, wishes and memories. Utilizing their artwork and verbalizations, they are helped to understand how they function as individuals and as part of a family and group system. Art therapy treatment is art expression that lends itself to exploration, and as a result, to the adjustment of individuals to life.

Coloring is an environment where we can improve our ability to listen and reprogram our inner dialogue. The quality of our thought can be seen as an asset or liability to the well being of the whole (spirit, mind, emotions and body). Thoughts of tiredness, hate, or illness are liabilities; while thoughts of adventure, love, and vitality are assets.

Emotional healing

It is not only focused on the finished piece of artwork, but also on the process of the creation of the art piece itself. The act of making a piece of art triggers internal activity that contributes to emotional healing. It can also function as a form of catharsis. Art is a therapeutic means of reconciling emotional conflicts, fostering self-awareness, developing social skills, managing behavior, solving problems, reducing anxiety, aiding reality orientation and increasing self-esteem.

Meditation

Many people find meditation difficult to attain even though the benefits are well documented. In Coloring Therapy, a state of meditative awareness is easily attained because the focus needed to suspend our inner dialogue occurs in the coloring.

This state of awareness (suspended inner dialogue) is the main purpose of meditation as well as Coloring Therapy. Once you recognize your inner dialogue, you can begin to manage it and influence life in a direction that is decidedly beneficial. It is thus important that parents understand the significance of art and colour in the lives of their children and not just send them for a "Drawing class" but also let them learn and appreciate art and colour for all its benefits.