Drawing sadness: what are young children telling us?

ABSTRACT

This article reports on the emotional factors that contribute to children’s sadness. As teachers are the most appropriate caregivers to detect problems and to address the impact of these challenges, 30 teachers asked 224 children (N=224) to draw and describe their experiences of sadness. From these drawings, two distinctive themes emerged, namely violence mostly relating to bullying, and experiences of loss. This article provides empirically derived insights which are important in the understanding of young children’s emotional and social needs within the broader society and have implications for teacher training curricula at higher education institutions. Student teachers need to be made aware of the factors that impact on the child’s emotional well-being. Teachers should also be equipped to support and deal with these adversities in a school situation. Future research studies relating to children’s experiences of violence and loss should be conducted in more diverse contexts where ethnicity and socio-economic backgrounds should be considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s experiences
• violence
• bullying
• loss
• children’s drawings
• teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Miemsie Steyn is a staff member of the Department of Early Childhood Education where she is responsible for the coordination of research activities. Her research focus is embedded in the field of Sociology of Education where the interplay between society and education is foregrounded.

Melanie Moen holds a masters' degree in Educational Psychology and she is a registered psychologist. She is a lecturer in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Pretoria and currently a PhD student with an interest in youth violence.