As parents, you often find yourself holding a drawing that your child has created. You take pride in the artwork and your child, usually displaying it on the refrigerator for a while so that everyone can admire it. The child feels proud and gains a lot of confidence when they see their artwork displayed prominently in the home.
Have you ever wondered what the child truly intended to depict in their drawing?
Can this innocent artwork reveal more information, more details about the child's mental and emotional state?
As I sit here writing this blog, I recall the drawings I used to hang on the refrigerator at home. My mother was proud of my artwork, and everyone who visited our home would hear about the wonderful child who creates art at school and brings it home. This tradition of my mother's started when I was in kindergarten and continued even when I was in school. Although the number of drawings decreased over time, the quality of the artwork and the meaning of the symbols within them increased.
Today, after more than twenty years of being a drawing detective, I want to share this story and experience with you as parents. It's an experience of a radical change in my life, a complete transformation that led me to where I am today. To the place where I dedicate my life to teaching every parent and every professional in the fields of education, welfare, and social work everything I know about deciphering children's drawings.
Let's go back to those days over fifty years ago. As an elementary school student, I went through a difficult experience. A violent boy who attended the same school caught me and locked me in one of the school's rooms. He tied my hands and sexually assaulted me right there in that room. This experience hurt me for my entire life, mentally, emotionally, and socially.
The situation at home was particularly challenging. My father had suffered a stroke, and my mother was always away from home due to work. In reality, I had no one to turn to, no one to share this difficult story with. I was very ashamed of myself, I was very afraid to complain, and I was afraid that the boy would take revenge on me if I told anyone.
The place where I directed my difficulty, the place where I could express myself was through drawing. I would draw anywhere - in the classroom, at home, in the yard, at my grandparents' house. I felt relieved, I felt that I had found a place to vent all my fears and concerns. I found a place and a mysterious partner to whom I could tell the terrible story, the experience of sexual assault that I experienced at such a young age.
My mother took care of the household, taking care of my father, taking care of three children. She was a 32-year-old woman whose world had been destroyed. Mom no longer greeted me when I came back from school, Mom no longer took the drawings from me, Mom no longer hung the drawings on the refrigerator.
And if it just happens. If only my paintings were hung on the refrigerator, maybe someone would see what I drew, maybe someone would know I was sad and depressed, and maybe someone would recognize the signs of violence that appeared in my painting.
The years passed, and I started a family of my own, I had children, and I continued in my mother's tradition, I would receive my children when they came from kindergarten and school, and the pictures they drew we also hung on the refrigerator in the kitchen of our house, there were pictures we framed and hung in the hallways of the house, for pride, to show off. We are all proud of our children. These actions as parents strengthened the self-confidence of each of our children.
Only one thing we didn't know, only one thing we don't think we should do, we didn't understand so it's important to read and know how to decipher the children's drawings. We didn't think that behind every painting hides the soul of a child. Behind every painting, there is a story that the child brings into the painting when he draws. He brings to the painting everything that is pushed deep, deep into the subconscious.
Years passed and there I was, studying at university. One of the elective courses offered was on deciphering children's drawings. Something urged me to choose this course. "You must learn this field," the voice said.
In the first class for deciphering children's drawings, it hit me. It hit me so hard that I was thrown back several years, to the same locked room at school where my hands were tied and the same boy from school sexually abused me, crushing my soul, my innocence, my pure spirit.
Suddenly, I heard a voice, a voice that became clearer and clearer. When I returned to the present moment, I saw my lecturer. I felt a saucer in my eyes. The teacher handed me a tissue to wipe my eyes. It was as if she had prepared the handkerchief in advance. She didn't say anything to me, just handed me the tissue, looked me in the eyes, and smiled an understanding smile.
That's when I realized why the same voice I heard had called me to learn to decipher children's drawings. I realized that I was learning a tool that would help me, that would help me assist that boy who was tied up at school. A tool that would help me help her see what's in his painting when they hang it on the fridge in the center of the house.
Understanding a drawing is like an X-ray, such that we can see and understand the deepest layers of our child's soul, even if he is a young child and even if he is a teenage boy.
And here I am today, continuing for twenty years in my great mission to bring the decoding of paintings to the center of the stage, to the forefront of parenting. To bring the decoding of paintings to the forefront of parenting as a tool for them to be parents who can see what is happening in the lives of their children, what is happening in their minds, and what they are expressing through painting.
I'm Koby Avraham, I study children's drawings and analyze children's drawings, or as I like to call myself, I'm a drawing detective.
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