Exploring art therapy for children’s wellbeing & development
Exploring art therapy for children’s wellbeing & development
Children’s wellbeing and development are often framed through milestones, benchmarks, or areas of concern. Within art therapy, these frameworks are not treated as endpoints to be reached, but as ways of noticing how a child is participating in the world around them.
Rather than asking whether a child is developing “as expected,” art therapy attends to how a child is relating — to people, materials, space, and difficulty. Wellbeing and development are understood as lived processes that become visible through shared activity over time.
From this perspective, art therapy offers a way of engaging with children’s emotional, social, physical, and cognitive development without separating these capacities into isolated goals.
Wellbeing as Something Felt and Lived
In art therapy, children’s wellbeing is encountered first as a felt and embodied experience rather than a measurable state. It becomes apparent in moments such as settling with a familiar adult, remaining engaged with an activity, or returning after something becomes difficult.
The creative process allows internal states to be expressed without requiring explanation. Feelings may appear through colour, movement, pressure, rhythm, or material choice. Over time, within consistent and attuned relationships, some children begin to recognise and communicate these states more clearly.
Wellbeing here is not defined as the absence of distress, but as the capacity to experience and express it within relational safety.
Development Through Social Participation
Even when sessions are individual, art therapy is inherently social. Children are learning alongside another person, sharing time, space, attention, and materials.
Within creative activity, social capacities such as turn-taking, negotiation, observation, joining in, and repair are encountered as part of doing something together. These experiences are not taught directly or extracted as skills; they emerge through participation in shared processes.
As children become more able to remain engaged within these relational conditions, changes in social participation may be noticed beyond therapy, including at home or in educational settings.
Attention, Focus, and Staying With Challenge
Creative work invites sustained attention through interest rather than demand. Children often remain engaged because the activity matters to them, and because effort is shaped by curiosity rather than instruction.
Within sessions, children encounter interruption, frustration, and moments where things do not go as planned. These moments are held relationally, allowing children to remain with difficulty rather than needing to avoid it.
Attention is supported not through training or control, but through meaningful engagement within supportive conditions.
Fine and Gross Motor Development Through Making
Art-making involves the body as well as the mind. Drawing, cutting, building, sculpting, and painting invite repeated use of the hands and fingers, while larger-scale or movement-based work engages coordination, balance, and whole-body involvement.
Because these actions occur within play and exploration rather than instruction, children often practise movements more freely and for longer periods. Over time, this can support participation in everyday activities such as writing, classroom tasks, and play.
Problem-Solving, Creativity, and Flexibility
Creative processes are rarely linear. Materials respond unpredictably, ideas shift, and plans require adjustment. Within art therapy, these moments are encountered in a context where experimentation is expected and outcomes are not predetermined.
Children engage with uncertainty, adapt their approach, and try alternatives within a relational field that can hold mistakes without urgency. Creativity here is not understood as artistic talent, but as flexibility, responsiveness, and openness to possibility.
How Development Carries Into Everyday Life
When children have repeated experiences of being supported, understood, and able to participate within relationship, these capacities may begin to appear in other contexts.
Caregivers and educators sometimes notice changes in regulation with familiar adults, communication of needs, social participation, or engagement with learning. These shifts are not set as targets within art therapy, but emerge as children carry relational experiences into the wider world.
Development That Is Practised, Not Taught
Art therapy supports children’s wellbeing and development by creating conditions where capacities can be lived rather than instructed.
Regulation, focus, empathy, coordination, creativity, and social engagement are woven through shared creative processes and relational experience. They are practised over time, in context, and at a pace shaped by the child’s participation rather than external expectation.
This is why the impact of art therapy is often noticed not only within sessions, but across the places where children learn, play, and relate.
Related Resources
Artful Beginnings: Art Therapy in Early Childhood Intervention
Why Place Matters: Children, Connection, and a Sense of Belonging
Important Information
This article offers a reflective, educational perspective on children’s wellbeing and development through art therapy. It describes observed patterns of growth and learning and does not claim guaranteed outcomes or replace individualised professional assessment or support.
References
Malchiodi, C. A. (2012). Handbook of Art Therapy.
Malchiodi, C. A. (2020). Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy.
Schore, A. N. (2012). The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy.
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind.
