Categories
Children's drawings
What a drawing does say, what it doesn't, and how to ask your child about it.
Why does my child draw the same thing over and over?
Repetition in children's drawings is a developmental stage, not a problem. In the schematic stage (roughly 7 to 9) a child works out how to draw an object once and then reuses that solution — their own "schema" — again and again. The same house, the same person, the same cat come out identically for weeks. This is how mastery and confidence are built. Repetition only warrants attention if the child tries nothing else at all and other changes come with it.
Read the articleHow should I ask my child about their drawing?
The best question is open, non-judging and has no single right answer: "can you tell me about this?" It leaves the child room to build the story themselves. Questions like "what is it?" push a child to find the correct answer; questions like "why is it so dark?" put them on the defensive and end the telling. The most reliable source on a drawing is what the child who made it says about it.
Read the articleChildren's drawing tests: DAP, HTP and KFD compared
There are three common drawing techniques: Draw-A-Person (DAP), House-Tree-Person (HTP) and the Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD). All three are used clinically to start a conversation with a child, not to diagnose. Projective drawing tests have limited diagnostic validity on their own; a professional always uses them alongside observation, interview and other measures.
Read the articleWhat does pencil pressure mean in a child's drawing?
Pencil pressure is first a measure of motor control, not of emotion. Young children haven't settled how they hold a pencil, so they either press very hard or draw very faintly; pressure evens out with age. The only thing that can reasonably be tied to emotion is a marked, sustained departure from the same child's own norm — a child who normally draws evenly pressing hard enough to tear the paper for weeks, or drawing lines you can barely see.
Read the articleWhat does a house mean in children's drawings?
A house is the thing children draw most, and they usually aren't drawing their own house — they're drawing the house schema they learned: square body, triangle roof, door in the middle, two windows. That repetition is a copying habit, not a personality signal. What carries meaning is not the schema but departures from it — no door at all, the house squeezed to the edge of the page, or the child placing themselves outside it — and only when the same departure repeats over weeks in the same child.
Read the articleIs my child's drawing something to worry about?
A single drawing is almost never cause for concern. Children draw what they've seen, heard and played; a frightening scene usually comes from a cartoon or a story they heard that week. What deserves attention is not one picture but a pattern: the same theme returning over weeks, accompanied by changes in sleep, appetite, school or behaviour. When those two appear together, talking to a professional is the right step.
Read the articleHow do children's drawings change with age?
Children's drawings move through a predictable order from scribble to symbol to realism: roughly scribbling from ages 2 to 4, first symbolic figures (tadpole people) from 4 to 7, a ground line and repeated schema from 7 to 9, and attempts at realism after 9. A 2025 study confirmed the order still holds — while stressing that the age bands are not absolute and the point of transition varies significantly from child to child.
Read the articleIn a family drawing, what does who-stands-where mean?
Three things carry most of the information in a family drawing: who is drawn, who is left out, and the distance between the figures. Children tend to place themselves next to the person they feel closest to, and to draw the figure they consider important larger. But none of this is a firm reading from a single picture — the size of the paper, where the child started drawing, and their mood that day all change the result.
Read the articleWhat do colours mean in children's drawings?
No single colour maps to a single emotion. In children's drawings, colour choice is mostly explained by three things: which crayon was within reach, which colour the child likes at that age, and the real colour of the thing being drawn. What carries meaning is not the colour in one picture but a shift in the same child's habit over weeks — a child who always uses bright colours suddenly working in one colour is a signal about that child; using black, on its own, says nothing.
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Emotions and anger
Tantrums, worry, fear and shyness — what's expected and what needs attention.
How do children's fears change with age?
Fears aren't random — each one arrives with a mental capacity the child has just gained. Fear of the dark and of separation come when attachment is being built; monsters arrive with imagination; illness and death arrive when permanence is understood; social fears arrive when a child realises other people hold opinions about them. So a new fear is usually a sign of development rather than a setback. What to watch is not the fear itself but how much of your child's day it takes away.
Read the articleHow do you teach a child emotional regulation?
Regulation isn't taught by explanation — it's learned by doing it together first. A young child can't bring their own nervous system down, so they borrow an adult's calm; this is called co-regulation. The order is: the adult stays calm, names the feeling, settles the body, and only then talks about solutions. With age a child starts doing some of those steps alone. Self-regulation comes out of co-regulation being lived many times over — it doesn't replace it, it grows from it.
Read the articleWhat are the signs of anxiety in children?
Anxiety in children rarely announces itself as worry. It shows up in the body and in avoidance: a stomach ache before school, trouble falling asleep, crying at separation, refusing something they used to do without a problem. Specific fears are expected at specific ages; what turns anxiety into a problem is not the fear itself but the way it narrows a child's life. When avoidance — not going to school, not sleeping alone, not visiting friends — lasts for weeks, it's worth an assessment.
Read the articleAre temper tantrums normal, and when do they stop?
Tantrums are an expected part of development between roughly one and four years old: a child who cannot yet name a feeling says it with their body instead. They peak around two to three and thin out as language arrives, becoming uncommon by school age. What matters is the pattern, not any single tantrum. Tantrums that persist several times a week past four or five, regularly run beyond fifteen minutes, end in injury to the child or someone else, or spill into school, sleep and eating are worth taking to a professional.
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Behaviour and limits
Setting limits, handling lying and hitting, and why punishment doesn't teach.
Defiance and the 'no' stage: how do you get through it?
Defiance isn't a flaw of character, it's the first rehearsal of autonomy. Around two, a child discovers they have wants of their own, and the clearest way to demonstrate that is to refuse. The stage shortens by sharing control rather than by pushing back: deciding in advance which part of a decision your child can own, signalling transitions, and keeping the genuinely non-negotiable list short measurably reduces the number of conflicts.
Read the articleMy child hits. What should I do?
In a young child, hitting is usually a communication gap rather than an aggression problem: a child who can't say what they want, and can't bring a feeling down when blocked, uses their hands. Physical aggression peaks around two to three and falls as language arrives. The response has three parts: stop the act immediately and calmly, name the feeling, then teach the word or the alternative action. Saying 'don't hit' isn't enough on its own, because it doesn't tell your child what to do instead.
Read the articleWhy does my child lie?
In the preschool years, lying is not a moral failure but a cognitive milestone: your child has just grasped that what you know and what they know can differ. Most lies at three or four are either imagination bleeding into reality or an attempt to avoid punishment. The useful distinction is not whether a child lies but what the lie is for: lies to escape punishment shrink when the punishment shrinks; lies for attention shrink when attention arrives another way. Persistent, planned and harmful lying is a separate question.
Read the articleHow do you set limits with a child?
A limit that works has three properties: there are few of them, they're known in advance, and they're the same every time. What determines a limit's force is not volume or severity but consistency — a rule that bends five times and lands on the sixth teaches a child that persistence works, not that the rule does. The easiest form of a limit is also not a prohibition but a choice: offering two options you'd accept either way measurably reduces conflict.
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Development by age
Every age has its own work — what to expect, and when to ask someone.
How long is a child's attention span at each age?
Attention span isn't one number — it varies with the task and with interest. As a rough guide, the time a child can focus on something they didn't choose is around two to three minutes per year of age: 8-12 minutes at four, 16-24 minutes at eight. The same child can stay far longer with a game they love, and that isn't a contradiction: it's what interest-driven attention looks like. To speak of an attention problem, the difficulty has to show up in more than one setting and persist over time.
Read the articleAges 7 to 12: what changes in a school-age child?
Between seven and twelve a child stops seeing the world through the family's eyes and starts applying their own measures. Concrete logic settles in, and rules, fairness and comparison come to the front. Friendships become a domain independent of the family, and self-evaluation feeds from it. Emotionally there's a shift too — your child stops telling you everything, because they've noticed they have an inner world. That quietness is usually not distance; it's the development itself.
Read the articleDevelopmental milestones from 3 to 6: what to expect when
Between three and six a child builds their body, their language and their social world at the same time. Roughly: at three, sentences reach three or four words and play shifts from side-by-side to together; at four, storytelling and 'why' questions take over; at five, rule-based play, turn-taking and letter and number awareness arrive; at six, the foundations of reading and writing settle along with real friendship preferences. Milestones describe order, not a timetable — what matters is not the age itself but whether progress is continuing.
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Family and siblings
Sibling rivalry, separation, moving, loss — how change lands in a child.
How do you talk to a child about death?
The single most helpful thing when explaining death is clear, concrete language. Euphemisms — 'went to sleep', 'we lost him', 'went away' — create fear and confusion in young children, opening new anxieties about sleep, travel and separation. Understanding that death is irreversible usually settles between five and seven; before that a child may ask the same question repeatedly. Grief in children runs in waves rather than continuously: fast switches between crying and playing aren't callousness, they're how a child carries it.
Read the articleHow do you tell a child about divorce?
What determines the effect of a divorce on a child is less the separation itself than the level of conflict afterwards and how predictable the child's care arrangements are. Three things are needed when you tell them: that the decision is final, that they are not responsible, and what will concretely change in daily life. Ideally both parents say it together, in one short and consistent account, with no detail and no blame. Afterwards a child may ask the same question for weeks — that isn't failing to understand, it's how they digest it.
Read the articleHow do you reduce sibling rivalry?
Sibling rivalry isn't a character problem, it's the natural result of sharing resources: attention, time and space, with a rival, for the first time. The strongest lever isn't equality — trying to be exactly equal teaches children to keep watching the scales. What works is separation: regular, short, uninterrupted one-to-one time with each child, and a description that belongs to each of them alone. In a fight, keeping the outcome the same for both rather than acting as judge lowers the payoff of telling on each other.
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School and friendship
Not wanting to go, making friends, bullying and homework.
How do you end homework battles?
Most homework conflict isn't about the homework — it's about renegotiating when and how it starts, every single day. A fixed time, a fixed place and an age-appropriate block removes the bulk of it. The second issue is role: a parent's job isn't supplying the right answer but building the structure and making the sticking points visible to the teacher. A parent guaranteeing the work is correct prevents the teacher from seeing where a child actually is.
Read the articleMy child is being bullied. What should I do?
Bullying and conflict are not the same thing: bullying involves a power imbalance, repetition and intent. The distinction matters because conflict can be resolved between children, while bullying requires adult intervention. The first step is listening without interrupting and keeping your reaction measured — an outsized display of anger is what stops children telling you again. Then: a concrete record (what, when, who), a dated written approach to the school, and follow-up. Telling a child to hit back doesn't work; what works is knowing they aren't alone and that adults are tracking it.
Read the articleMy child doesn't want to go to school. What should I do?
School refusal has no single cause, and the right response depends on which one it is. Four headings separate it out: separation anxiety (leaving home is hard), social difficulty (no place in the class, or bullying), academic difficulty (they can't follow the lesson), and a physical cause. One rule holds across all four: the longer the avoidance runs, the harder the return, so the aim is attendance in some form rather than a perfect day. A graded return plan agreed with the school works measurably better than waiting at home.
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Sleep and routines
Bedtime battles, night terrors, nightmares and sleep need by age.
Night terrors or nightmares? How to tell the difference
They're different events. A nightmare happens in the second half of the night during REM sleep; the child wakes, is frightened, can describe what happened and wants comfort. A night terror happens in the first third of the night as a partial waking out of deep sleep; the child shouts, sweats, may have their eyes open, but isn't actually awake, doesn't respond to comfort and remembers nothing in the morning. Night terrors increase with sleep debt and irregular schedules; recurring nightmares usually relate to something difficult in the daytime.
Read the articleMy child won't go to bed: how do you fix bedtime resistance?
Bedtime resistance usually comes down to one of three things: bedtime falls at an hour when the body isn't sleepy yet, the routine changes every evening, or separation is hard right now. The fix follows the same order: first establish a short routine with a fixed sequence that ends at the same time every night for two weeks, then move bedtime in 15-minute steps towards the real sleep-onset time, and only then work on separation by increasing distance gradually. Nothing works in a single night; what the effective methods share is doing the same thing every night.
Read the articleHow much sleep does a child need? Hours by age
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus recommends, per 24 hours, 11-14 hours for ages 1-2 (including naps), 10-13 hours for ages 3-5 (including naps), 9-12 hours for ages 6-12 and 8-10 hours for ages 13-18. These are ranges rather than targets: two children the same age can genuinely need two hours' difference. In practice a better measure than the clock is daytime function — if your child wakes without a struggle and doesn't hit sharp mood and attention crashes during the day, the amount is probably enough.
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Screens and play
Screen time, what play is for, and why boredom isn't a loss.
What does play do for child development?
Play isn't a by-product of learning, it's the main route to it. In free play a child does three things at once: builds and negotiates rules, delays an impulse, and tries on someone else's point of view by taking a role. Those three together form the foundation of what we later call attention, planning and emotional regulation. An adult's job isn't to run the play but to supply time, space and a few open-ended materials.
Read the articleHow much screen time should a child have?
The World Health Organization recommends no screen time under one year old, and no more than one hour of sedentary screen time per day for ages two to four, noting that less is better. For school-age children there is no credible guideline giving a single number of minutes; the framework recommended instead is this: as long as screens aren't displacing sleep, physical activity, time together and schoolwork, duration is secondary. In practice the useful measure isn't the minutes but what the screen pushed out.
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