Art Therapy

When I was in high school I thought that I wanted to be an art therapist. I was trying to combine my interest in art and psychology and stumbled across this seemingly perfect occupation.

Senior year of high school I shadowed a handful of art therapists and like most wide-eyed-I'm-going-to-change-the-world-18-year-olds I quickly became jaded. The job, the therapy, just wasn't what I thought. I imgained miraculous healing artwork and thoughtful caring therpy. Not to say that doesn't exist, I just didn't witness it.

My failed experiences plus the education required to obtain a degree that I was no longer sure I wanted led me off the art therapy path.

Today my inital excitement for it can rushing back.

Ainsley has been fixated on breaking her snowglobe and all the aftermath. I realize that it's been 6 days and that she's two and that it was a rather traumatic event. But this is nothing new for Ainsley.

She fixates.

I don't know if she's inherited my penchant for unfounded worry and neurosis, or she just needs to double check things, hear the story over and over, and be reassurred. But for whatever reason she does it.

After checking her car seat at the airport on the way home from Florida a few months back she couldn't let it go. "Where my car seat mama? Where Ainsley's car seat go? Oh no! Where Ainsley's car seat!" Even after picking it up at baggage claim she still needed reasurrance (and sometimes still wants to double check that it's safely in the car).

Explaining and answering over and over doesn't seem to be doing the trick, so with her new fixation on her stitches and her broken music box I thought I'd try another route.

We sat down and drew. Well, I drew, she dictated what to draw.

"My music box mama. It broken. Ainsley broke it. I miss the horsey. It played music. I miss it. It's in the garbage. The garbage truck took it away. Ainsley cry, Ainsley sad. Ainsley go to the hospital. Get stitches, it really hurt..."

She talked and talked and I just drew. I didn't interrupt her. I let her choose the colors and when I was done she just stopped talking grabbed the drawings and sat calmly looking at them. Then she talked again, this time with a smile on her face.

"Oh mama. It's Ainsley's music box. It's so pretty. I miss it. Ainsley went to the hospital. Ainsley feel better. Ainsley not sad mama. Ainsley happy."

She proceeded to draw a smiley face over the frown that I'd drawn.

She looked so proud. She looked so happy. I don't know how much our little drawing/talking session helped but I do know that my little girl felt better about her broken music box and her sad cut hand, if only for a little bit.

Children are so visual. I forget sometimes with Ainsley's growing vocabulary that she is still so young and really can't articulate what she's thinking or feeling all the time. I think it helped her to have those drawings, something visual to look at when she's feeling sad. To be reminded that it's ok to feel sad, to be hurt, but it's also ok to let things go and be happy.

She's pulled out those drawings numerous times so far today. she always looks at them with a sad face, then traces her little hands over the circumference of the musicbox and smiles. "Needs more sparkles mama". So she added some.

I'm not saying she won't keep telling me a million times a day that her musicbox is broken, that the garbage truck took it away, that's she's sad and her stitches really hurt. I'm just hoping that we've found a new way to cope, a new avenue to try. She sure loves those drawings.

I may have to give this art therapy thing a second look. In like 10 years.

Some other photos from today...

::Ainsley shot these ones of Louise "walking" towards her::

::My sweet Ainsley May in her new spring top she picked out herself, I seriously have never met a 2 year old more opinionated about her clothes::

::She's growing up way too fast::