And Don't Forget To Breathe...

Lately I have found myself becoming increasingly concerned with the level of anxiety I see in a number of the children I work with. Creative anxiety. These are the children who are immensely critical of the imperfections in their work and it seems to be exponentially on the rise. Criticism of the expression of self is a worrying thing.  For me it seems to be counter intuitive to the child's process of creating and begins to reflect on the adult state of mind, one of inferiority on a deep level, for children work in the space of the unconscious when drawing and making.  Now my very small ones don't exhibit this, but somewhere around 5 it seems to start taking hold in some children. Why? I don't really know.

Certainly anxiety is a normal part of life in certain respects.  At some point we all get anxious and from an early age, right from infancy, children assume anxious behaviour, separation anxiety, pain, insecurity, birth of a sibling... for the world, their world and our world, is an unstable, unpredictable place.  And no matter how hard we try as parents to be the shining example of calm and love, we are fallible, life is hard and anxiety a prevalent part of daily existence.  I have an anxious child.  I have an anxious father and brother, no doubt I too am full of anxiety, but for me the real concern is how it creeps into the creative space to the point that children are near tears with distress because a picture or task has failed to meet their expectations of perfection.  Here words fail.  I tell them that if I wanted perfect I would go to a factory or a computer, that we are looking for unique instead.  Alas, the trauma continues.  I praised one little girl (who is usually fraught with anxiety) at how well she was doing and, in particular, not requesting my assistance.  I thought we had climbed that mountain for that day.  Not so.  When the next meltdown came she was beside herself that she might require my assistance and that in itself signaled failure!

Children are natural artists, they draw on an inner world to understand and evolve a true expression of self, so if anxiety is present here, in a space that aids in breaking open pain, connecting the dots of the inner world, in an environment designed for therapeutic processes, then what do we do?  How can we calm and curb?  Now I am by no means a psychologist or any kind of mental health professional but I have given it a lot of thought and read a lot lately about it.  As with everything it stems from parents, genetics and environment. As parents it is not how we view our children (our criticism of them)  but rather the way we view ourselves.

In support of our children perhaps we need to cut ourselves a break. Yes, life is hard, and making sense of our own emotional injuries is a life long journey, but we work hard and need to accept and praise ourselves. Drop the internal risk manager, fire the critic who never leaves your side and find a little acceptance.  Honour ourselves and we learn to honour those we are raising. Perhaps we also need to understand that while our children undoubtedly need boundaries, love and sincere praise, that who they are right now, anxieties included, forms part of their life path in an imperfect world.

And as a teacher of anxious artists perhaps all I can do is persevere with acceptance, patience and a wonder at how they persevere in their creations, attempting each and every time to overcome the demons of anxiety to find that inner world of magic which art allows to emerge.

Ps.  My favourite definition of anxiety is" anticipation of future collapse!"

Now on to an almost connected topic...

Teaching the concept of positive and negative to children...

You will need:

2 (preferably) A3 pieces of paper
paint
card
scissors
double sided tape/prestick
glue

I like to discuss the elements of art and drawing with children.  We have long discussions on line, how crazy it can be, colour and how messy it can be etc, always relating it back to the topic at hand and how we can incorporate these concepts into our work.  This deals with the idea of light and dark relating to positive and negative.  We start with a child standing with arms out to see how she/he is the positive shape in space, then we look at the background and further single out the positive and negative elements - curtains vs wall. Sometimes we land up looking at the spot on the wall vs the wall itself!

Place the two finish articles next to each other and simply point out how the negative becomes the positive and vice versa.  It is a simple experiment of shape and colour that I find quite effective. Some of the children had great fun creating new shapes, this is a lovely aspect to encourage even in younger children.

Have fun and try to guide your children in their creative endeavours instead of authoritatively teaching them!