What Your Child’s Funniest Drawings Reveal About Their Development (Parenting Tips)
Last Tuesday, I was dumping crumpled math worksheets and a half-eaten bag of Goldfish out of my 7-year-old son Leo’s backpack after school, when a folded sheet of neon orange construction paper fell out. I unfolded it, and there it was: a portrait of me at dinner, with a giant round head, three stick legs sticking out of the bottom of my torso, and what looked like a whole pepperoni pizza oozing out of my open mouth. The caption in wobbly blue crayon read: “Mom eating tacos.”
I called my husband over from the kitchen, and we both laughed so hard we snort-laughed at the extra leg and the mislabeled taco. When Leo wandered in ten minutes later, munching on a granola bar, I held it up and asked why I had three legs. He rolled his eyes like I’d asked the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “Because your left leg was under the table, duh,” he said. “I can see it through the wood, so I had to draw it.”
That wasn’t the first funny, wonky drawing we’ve gotten from him. Last month, he brought home a portrait of our golden retriever, Max, that had 12 eyes scattered all over its body and head. When we asked, he explained that Max can see every squirrel everywhere, even the one that lives behind the living room wall that we can’t see, so he needs extra eyes. Two years ago, he drew our family minivan with five wheels, and I made the mistake I still think about: I pointed out that cars only have four wheels, took his crayon, and crossed the fifth one out. He crumpled the drawing up and threw it in the trash, and wouldn’t talk about it for an hour. I later found out the fifth wheel was the spare in the back, which he’d watched my husband change a month before. It mattered to him, so he put it in.
I started volunteering in Leo’s first-grade classroom once a month last fall, and that’s when I started paying more attention to these funny drawings. Every kid has them: a drawing of a dad with a beard that stretches off the page, a cat with six tails, a house with windows on the inside walls. Their teacher, Ms. Henderson, told me that most parents who come in for conferences just laugh at these drawings and move on, but they’re actually one of the best windows into how kids are learning to think.
She explained that those extra legs, extra eyes, and extra wheels aren’t mistakes kids make because they can’t draw yet. They’re a specific stage of drawing called transparent drawing, where kids draw everything they know is there, not just what they can see from one angle. When Leo draws my leg through the table, that’s not a mess-up—it means he understands that objects don’t disappear when they’re behind other things, and he can represent that idea on paper. That’s a big step in symbolic thinking, the same skill he’ll use to learn fractions and write stories later on. When he puts 12 eyes on the dog, that’s not just a funny joke—it’s him prioritizing the thing that matters most about Max (that he’s always hunting squirrels) over what a realistic dog looks like. That’s narrative thinking, learning to tell a story through art instead of just copying a shape.
Before I started talking to Ms. Henderson, I used to just stick the funny ones on the fridge for a month, then toss them when we ran out of space. I also used to worry that Leo’s drawings were still so wonky when some of his friends could draw realistic people and animals. Now I know that the funny, “wrong” drawings are actually a good sign. Kids who are willing to add extra parts to make their idea clear are practicing flexible thinking, which matters more for long-term learning than drawing a perfect stick figure.
I’ve also changed a few small things I do when Leo shows me a new drawing, that any parent can try without extra time or effort. First, I don’t correct the drawing anymore, even if it looks totally wrong. If I think something is off, I don’t say “that’s not how people look” I just ask a specific question about the weird part, like “can you tell me about that extra leg?” instead of a general “what is this drawing of?” That gives him a chance to explain his thinking, instead of making him feel like he did it wrong. Second, if he asks me to help him draw something, I don’t redraw it “correctly” for him. I just ask him what he wants the drawing to do, and I help him get the shape he wants, not the shape I think it should be. Third, I keep one funny drawing a month in a folder in my closet, instead of throwing them all away. I don’t need to keep every single one, but it’s nice to look back and see how his thinking has changed.
Last week, Leo brought home a drawing of Ms. Henderson that had five hands, all holding different things: a pencil, a snack, a tissue, a book, and a kid’s hand. When I asked why five hands, he said “she’s always helping five people at once, so duh, she needs five hands.” That’s perfect, it makes total sense through his eyes.
I still mess up sometimes. Last month I accidentally threw away a drawing of a flying garbage truck with six wings when I was cleaning up the kitchen counter, and Leo was upset for a little while. I still sometimes catch myself about to point out a “mistake” before I bite my tongue. But for the most part, I’ve stopped seeing these funny drawings as silly mistakes, and started seeing them for what they are: little snapshots of how my kid’s brain works, right now. The three-legged me drawing is taped to the inside of my pantry door now, where I see it every morning when I get my coffee. It still makes me laugh, and it still reminds me to slow down and ask before I correct.
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