Why Is Art and Emotional Expression Important for Kids? A Teacher’s Perspective
Last Wednesday, 2:15 pm, 20 minutes left of the school day, we do free art right after recess. Leo came in from the main office, face still red, hood pulled up, wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone. He’d pushed Javi after Javi grabbed the Lego monster truck Leo had brought from home for show-and-tell, and he’d spent 10 minutes cooling down with the office aide. I didn’t nag him about apologizing yet, everyone was still settling from recess, I just pulled an extra piece of gray construction paper out of the bin, set it by his spot in the back next to the picture book shelf, and pushed the dented box of pastels toward him. He didn’t say anything, just nodded.
I helped Lila glue googly eyes onto her paper butterfly, talked to Noah about why he’d drawn his golden retriever with six legs, and kept glancing over at Leo out of the corner of my eye. Most days he draws monster trucks, all carefully outlined in blue and red, with big black tire marks. That day he grabbed the black pastel first, held it so hard his knuckles went white, and scribbled back and forth across the whole page, layer after layer. Pastel dust got all over his scuffed sneakers and the edge of his desk, and the paper started to pill from the pressure. Then he grabbed the bright red pastel, scratched big jagged Xs all over the black, hard enough to tear through the paper in three spots. When he was done, he crumpled it up into a tight ball, stuffed it into the front pocket of his hoodie, folded his arms, and stared at his desk. I walked by on my way to throw away an empty glue bottle, just said “all done” and he nodded. He didn’t offer to show me, and I didn’t ask.
That night I got an email from Leo’s mom. She said he pulled the crumpled ball out at dinner, spread it out flat on the kitchen table, and said “This is what my chest feels like when I’m mad. All black, and the Xs are where I want to hit something.” She said he’d never done that before. Usually when he’s upset at home, he slams his bedroom door and won’t talk for an hour, no matter how many times she asks what’s wrong. She asked what we’d done in class that made him open up like that.
That question made me think about how many times I get asked, by parents and even other teachers, why we spend three hours a week on unstructured art instead of extra reading fluency practice or math test prep. Testing season is coming up, and everyone’s focused on checking the right boxes. A lot of people ask me straight up: Is art and expressing emotions this way really that important? Can’t kids just learn to talk about how they feel?
A couple months ago, we had Mia in my class, whose parents had just split up. She was acting out, wouldn’t turn in her work, kept locking herself in the bathroom during center time crying. I asked her if she wanted to draw instead of doing her narrative writing that day, and she nodded. For a week straight, every free art period she drew a picture of her house, her mom, her, and her dad, then erased the dad over and over until the paper had a big hole where he used to be. She never said a word about the divorce to me, but after that week, she stopped hiding in the bathroom, started joining the other kids on the playground again.
The thing most people don’t get is that most little kids don’t have the words for big, messy feelings yet. When you’re 8 years old, your brain’s still working out how to turn that tight, achy, burning thing in your chest into a sentence like “I feel really hurt that someone took my thing and I’m embarrassed I brought it to school in the first place.” When you make them stop, calm down, and talk about it right after something bad happens, half the time they just shut down, because they can’t do it. Art is the step in between. It doesn’t need words. It just gets the feeling out of your body and onto the paper.
It doesn’t take much to do this at home, either. You don’t need fancy art classes or expensive supplies. I tell parents to keep a bin of random supplies by the living room or their kid’s bedroom: blank paper from the printer, broken crayons collected from fast food kids meals, old magazines, half-used glue sticks, even scrap cardboard from delivery boxes. Leave it where the kid can get to it anytime, no permission needed. If they grab it when they’re upset, don’t push them to tell you what it means right away. If they want to share, just listen. If they don’t, just say “that looks like it helped you get it out” and leave it alone. Don’t comment on whether it’s pretty or makes sense. I’ve seen so many parents ruin this by saying “why did you draw all black? That’s so sad, draw a sunny garden instead.” That just tells the kid you don’t want to see their bad feelings, so they’ll stop sharing next time.
It’s been two weeks since that black and red drawing. Last week, another kid took Leo’s new mechanical pencil out of his desk without asking. I watched Leo’s face get red, his hands clench up at his sides, then he got up, walked over to the art bin, pulled out a piece of paper, scribbled for a minute and a half, crumpled it up, threw it in the trash can by the door, then walked over to the kid and asked for his pencil back. No pushing, no yelling. That’s not a perfect fix. He still has days where he slumps in the back and won’t talk to anyone. But it’s a tool that works for him, when words don’t.
I know we’re all stretched thin, trying to get kids to hit all the milestones, keep up with school work, be good communicators. Art feels like a luxury a lot of the time. But for the kids who can’t find the words, it’s not a luxury. It’s just a way to breathe. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. But I’ve yet to see a kid get worse from having a place to put their messy feelings, even if it’s just on a crumpled piece of construction paper.
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