It seems you can’t even 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 in knowing ahead of time that
my child may have an inherent character flaw and is going to grow
up to be an antisocial, psychopathic mass murderer. I’d much rather
be surprised.
It seems you can’t even 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 in knowing ahead of time that my child may have an inherent character flaw and is going to grow up to be an antisocial, psychopathic mass murderer. I’d much rather be surprised.
But one day I was reading the latest parenting magazine, and I came across an article about how deciphering a preschooler’s artwork can 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 the family history on my husband’s side of the family, I figured one teeny comparative analyze 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 1) The size of the objects in the picture, 2) his attention to detail, and 3) the sketches of miniature chalk outlines covering most of the paper.
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.
Just 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 friends’ 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 my friends 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 a no mouth means he has an inability to communicate? Or how I could inform Peter’s mom that, according to the jagged teeth and spiked fingers in his self-portrait, 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?
I went home and tossed the article into the trash can.
Sometimes it’s just better that way.
