Children and Art Therapy

Research Paper  
   
There are many fields of study that focus on children and their needs whether it may be mental,         social or physical, one of these fields of study is child psychology. Child psychology is a form of study that allows understanding the developmental stages of children and what should be expected of them during their different stages. But art therapy permits us to understand children at a different level, a more intimate level, allowing us to view more in-depth the mind of a child. By understanding the developmental and behavioral stages of children therapists can diagnose a troubled child. However they can only help to a certain point. Children have difficulty expressing themselves through words and art therapy allows them to express their internal feelings more easily, which is done with the help of a picture.
          There are always questions that arise when it comes to understanding humans in general, but
the interest in understanding the developmental stages of humans from birth to death has been a focus of psychology. Researchers have established a system that names the traits, skills and levels of development in children such as their sight, comprehension, and their ability to speak. The developmental stages in children are broken up into the children's months (baby's months until first year), toddler years (the first four to five years), and childhood (years until child reaches ten years of age). (Medical Library Search). Child psychologists have been able to track the development and the process that children undergo through out their childhood years, but each individual child develops differently. There are children that speak, walk faster or slower than others but there are also times when many children are believed to develop later than the norm, when in reality the children may have problems or disorders. Through the advancement in developmental psychology many of the common disorders in children such as autism,... [continues]

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