Assessment via Drawing Activities

Name: Assessment via Drawing Activities
Uploaded: 2025-11-09T00:06:34.000Z
Description: Here’s a fun exercise to assess clients’ interests, abstract thinking and communication skills

Here’s a fun exercise to assess clients’ interests, abstract thinking and communication skills

From the course

EMDR for Kids and Teens

One of the activities I also like to do is ask a young child, I don't usually do it with older children or teens, but you can, is ask them to draw a picture. And I ask them to draw a picture of themselves doing something that they enjoy doing and then ask them to draw a picture of their family around the dinner table. I do this to find out what they feel good about. So when they're drawing that self picture, then it's usually a conversation about what they like to do, what they feel good about. I'm asking about resources. And as they're doing this, this is how I'm also observing their ability to draw, their fine motor skills, their ability to follow instructions. And, again, this helps me understand the child better. Also, you can see how they think and how they speak. Are they being very concrete in the assignment? Do they have the ability to abstract a little bit? What are the words that they use? How do they communicate things? And this is gonna help me in terms of bridging my languaging with them and how I formulate what I say to them and how I explain EMDR to them. I like to do this exercise in the first session because it makes my office a comfortable, safe place. It makes that relationship with the child more fun and less stressful, and it's just a real nice transition. It makes the relationship and the office a welcoming place.