Negative emotions in children's drawings and their emotion regulation strategies

Abstract

This research was carried out in order to reflect the negative emotions of children on their paintings and to examine the strategies they use while regulating these emotions. The phenomenological design was adopted in this study in accordance with the qualitative research approach. The participants were chosen by means of homogeneous sampling and on a voluntary basis. The data of this study, which was conducted with a total of 50 children aged between 6 and 10 years, were obtained through drawing and interview techniques. The children were allowed to draw the emotions they assumed as negative in their natural environment without time limitation. Then, one-to-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with each child about the picture they drew. The obtained data were analyzed by content analysis method. As a result of the research, it was seen that there were no negative emotions such as anxiety and fear in the pictures and interviews of the six-year-old children. On the other hand, these feelings were encountered in ten-year-old children. According to another result, feelings such as jealousy, loneliness and insecurity were not encountered in children in the ten-year-old group, unlike the children in the six-year-old group. It was observed that children generally included feelings of sadness and anger in their drawings. In addition, it is noteworthy that ten-year-old children also include anxiety and fear. In the context of emotion regulation strategies, it was revealed that ten-year-old children used more emotion regulation strategies than six-year-old children.