Child art therapy comprises different practices in education, rehabilitation and psychotherapy.  A successful field nowadays where art is included into the psychotherapy, child art therapy is used as revenue for children and their art therapist to not only looks into the unconscious but to ultimately be acquainted with it on a conscious level as well. Utilized to encourage healing, art on a therapeutic level is used in lots of settings to help the child get better.

One of these key settings entails the school, where the art therapist assists the child with inner conflicts, making use of the child’s artwork to put into some kind of positive action through inner change. Child art therapy does not just entail the art therapist, but the teaching and counseling staff as well as the child’s parents and family members.

Most of the times, the concerned students within the art therapy setting are special education students who are facing difficulty. In this instant, the child art therapy is used for conditions for instance learning disabilities, emotional problems and disturbances, behavior disorders, and even physical handicaps that are the consequence of impaired motor control.

Child art therapy entails a Masters level in education, which makes them proficient in recognizing the six stages of growth in children’s drawings besides being able to bond intellectual growth in the child, their psychosocial stages of development, and this correspondence to the six stages of growth in the child’s drawings. These six stages fall within certain age groups:

1.       The Scribble Stage – occurs 18 months to two years of age

2.       This age demonstrates the ability to be aware of patterns, utilizing hand-eye coordination.

3.       The Pre-Schematic Stage – occurs four to seven years

4.       The child may draw human figures with circles,

5.       and two dangling lines for legs.

6.       The Schematic Stage -occurs seven to nine years

The distinctiveness of this age group show what the child is thinking opposed to what they are essentially seeing.

1.       The Dawning Realism – occurs nine or two years

2.       Demonstrating how things “really look” become important, which causes excessive frustration

When using child art therapy, the child is typically given five or six art directions by the art therapist. They will correspond to the child’s perception of themselves, their family, their school, or any facet of their environment. When this is completed, they will be assessed by the art therapist as well as looking at the child’s academic history, their personal growth, and their family. Many things need to be examined–the child’s culture, their home life, or their financial situation, as drawings differ across the spectrum.  One thing that has been observed is when learning disabled children are found to have low intelligence measurements on standardized tests, they are considerably more advanced in creative and visual intelligence. A change for instance adding a visual element may be required to augment their learning abilities.