Creative Compulsive: The Next Generation

  

The master at work during her no body phase.

     Several years ago I worked with young children with autism as an in home Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapist.  One of the many things we worked on were making simple drawings, including human figures.  This spurred my interest in the typical development of the human figure in early childhood drawings.  I did a little research, and learned about the typical steps beginning scribbles, moving to objects with radial symmetry, on to a head with often random numbers of arms and legs, finally arriving at a head with a body and arms and legs.

The last no body human

     Both of my children have spent countless hours with paintbrushes, pencils, and crayons in hand creating masterpiece after masterpiece.  About 2 months before her 4th birthday, my daughter made that mighty developmental leap between bodiless humans and bodied humans.  Literally overnight she replaced her typical head with arms and legs with the a dressed body.  It was like a switch had been flipped.  I suppose it was so amazing in part because I happened to be paying attention, perfectly typical, but no less amazing.  

The first human with body

     It leaves me wondering, why no bodies.  Do the drawings give is an insight in to the child's perception  of the world, or are they simply the reflection of the degree of their mastery of spatial relationships.  Perhaps an even greater question, what drives humans to create images in the first place.