Day One: Part 2, Painting
So after my failed attempt to lovingly serve my boys a turkey sandwich with acceptance and unconditional positive regard, we cleared off the table for painting. I personally love painting with kids. It’s fun, easy to take out and clean up provides great insight through colors. Colors are powerful and are used to market products to us everyday. Green (also the color of money) actually makes you hungry. Blues and greys are calming, typically colors you find in spas. So naturally, the subconscious can choose a color to reflect a feeling without having to think about it first. This is excellent when working with kids. What colors do you think of when you are angry? Most will say red, or black. What colors do you associate happiness with? Most would say yellow, or orange. Pretty easy, huh? Try not to be too concrete on this. If your child has a another reason for choosing a color that seems like an odd choice, they could be associating that color with an object they saw that evoked that feeling or may not be at a place where their emotions are congruent (as you will see was Aidan’s case). For more on what colors can say about feelings, here is a great chart.
So, this past week, Matt and I introduced to our boys that a move in the winter time was highly likely. We wanted to give them plenty of time to process it and talk about it with us, especially if anything changes. I figured this was a great topic to start with.
After setting out the supplies, I gave them a couple of rules: “Paint stays on the newspaper, here’s how you clean your brush, and we will have several opportunities to paint. One painting will be on a topic, the other can be whatever you want! Which would you like to do first?”
When it was time, I gave them the topic “I would love to see you paint a picture of how you feel about the upcoming move this summer. I’m sure you have many feelings when you think of it. You can use any colors you like, and paint any picture you would like about that. You can also tell me about it while you are painting, or wait until you are done.”
I gave them a few options as well on how they could do it, just to open their minds to other possibilities. “You can paint one of what you will miss here, or what you are looking forward to there, or even draw a line down the middle and paint both. If you have another idea, that’s okay too!”
Jack, who is almost six and still in a stage of fantasy immediately picks up yellow. He is looking forward to a positive fantasy of change. Even though I see a big smiley face on his page, I ask why he chose yellow. He states because he is happy. As he paints and talks, I find out that he is excited about going to a new school and meeting new friends. He is my extrovert and can make friends quickly on a playground anywhere. Within minutes he is following a game someone else started, or leads out on his own asking others to join along. His heart is usually only pricked with the pain of hurt in well 
established relationships. When I ask him if he will be missing anything here, he only says he will not miss Bullies. He had a girl that he didn’t like in class last year and he chose blue because he was happy to be leaving her and an giant red “x” to show “it’s over.”
Aidan’s what a bit more intriguing. He is older, now coming out of the fantasy stage of development. He is shifting his focus more towards peers, playing with others, and developing who he is as he relates to peers. Of course this will peak as he gets into adolescence. Being that he is also interested in details, he wanted to make a list rather than a picture. I encouraged him to be creative and do his best to put a picture to his feelings rather than list words. This was a good challenge to him as he normally pushes down his feelings until something emotionally pricks him hard enough.
He opted for the split page of what he would miss and what he is looking forward to. When I asked about color choices, he told me he chose blue for the side he would miss. “When you sing the blues, blue is a good color for sad.” He then painted his “list” of friends he would be saying good-bye to and wrote “school” under that side as well. Interesting, he chose the color red for what he was looking forward to. When I asked him why red (Red usually shows a less positive 
emotion), he said he thought red was an exciting color. I wasn’t going to doubt his choice- especially after our turkey sandwich episode, howeverit felt in-congruent to me. Knowing what he would be facing in a move (he has a memory of leaving Colorado and making friends here), “exciting” didn’t seem what he was expressing, even in his voice. Without making leading statements, I said that many people choose red for other emotions and asked what else he might be feeling. It was then he came to describe nervousness as a better description. He was unsure of how he would feel trying to make new friends. Under that though, he decided to mask over or re-write that feeling that came up by drawing an image of the house he was looking forward to. Green was certainly a more confident, happy color for him. Perhaps having a new house that is still our home will bring him great comfort. Maybe I’ll have Italian bread for him and be ready to make it “his way.”
Finally, here is one of my favorite paintings from a 5 year old client I worked with for a year. She gave me permission to take a picture of it and keep it. She lost her father tragically and spent a majority of that year coming to terms with him being gone. Our goal was for her to see him as “with her” but okay with him not physically being here. After months of angry and sad paintings with red and black and grey reflecting all of them together with sad faces, this was her final picture. Here she shows her with her siblings and mother all together without him. Notice how they all have smiles on their faces! All happy colors and green grass. She is moving to a new house in this picture and her father is right where he needs to be, always with them, but in heaven (he also has a yellow smile that is hard to see).
