Child Psychology

From my understanding, child psychologists often use art to encourage their young patients to express themselves about past traumas.

I thought I would share this with you.  Ashley and I were drawing one day and she said she wanted to draw a whole family of birds.  First came the Mama bird.  Then she drew four babies, one girl and three boys (as our family will have any time now).  Ashley has watched enough Disney movies to know that female animals always have very long, fluttery eyelashes, so naturally that is how she distinguishes the girls from the boys.

And that was that.  But then Ashley tipped her head and examined her picture.  "No, I'm going to make them ALL girls!" she said, "because it's better like that!"

So within a few seconds the Mama bird now had all daughters.

Ashley needed to add one more thing.  "I'm going to draw the meanest, meanest Daddy bird ever!"  she announced.  In the few seconds it took her to doodle his outline, Ashley repeated her original statement about the bird being mean.

"Why is the Daddy bird so mean?" I asked with a laugh.  But she didn't have an answer for me, just a shy grin.

After an addition of a mustache on the Dad's beak (does a mustache make a man evil in the mind of a three-year-old?), Ashley declared her picture complete.

If I were a child psychologist, I might be a little worried.  But I'm not which means I was able to get a good laugh.  Joel, on the other hand, has periodically mentioned the mean daddy aspect of this picture for days.  What does that mean for him?  I'm not a regular psychologist either so it's up to you to decide!