The "Draw Your Family" Test

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The "draw your family" test is given primarily to older kids and young teens. The logic behind it is that while people that age may have difficulty talking about their feelings, their emotions often come out through drawings. As a result, the therapist can determine the child's feelings about his situation in the family. If you were ever asked to draw your family, as part of a therapy session or otherwise, how did you react? And what did you drawing look like?

I'll start with my own. A therapist, who was evaluating me for ADD, asked me to draw a bunch of things. I had no trouble drawing a forest, and only a little bit of trouble drawing my school, although the school drawing looked rather schematic and sterile. But when she asked me to draw my family, I freaked out, and tried to make up excuses not to draw it. Sadly, telling her that I'm not good at drawing people (it's still true) didn't help me, and she kept insisting. As a result, I freaked out so much, that I even offered her a bribe (the $7 I had in my pocket at the time, lol) to avoid having to draw my family. Eventually, she relented, told me not to draw it, and wrote down something in her notebook. I became highly concerned when I saw her writing, but it was far more tolerable than having to go through with the drawing.

In all honesty, I had a good reason for freaking out. My home life was utterly miserable, and I dreamed of getting away, and living on my own, even as a child. But at the same time, I didn't want the test results to show anything bad, since I was worried that the consequences could be much worse. So why didn't I just draw a picture of a happy family, and pass it off as my own? Because honestly, I had no idea what happy family drawing was supposed to look like.

I think that the Draw Your Family test is a good idea. That way, professionals would be able to get to the heart of the child's problems.

LOL $7 bribe that's hilarious

if i had to draw my family, it would be me with my mom and my bro altogether and my fat and ugly father a bit farther from all of us. when he wasn't at home, it was nice and peaceful. as soon as we heard the keys opening the front door, our mood dropped down. people like him shouldn't be allowed to have children.

and even if i wanted to cheat and draw some happy family, i wouldn't be able to. i wouldn't be able to give him that position even in a stupid drawing to make my therapist happy in order to cover the possible outcome of such task.

You have no idea how made this kind of thing makes me. All through school it was draw this, draw that, make this look good. The teachers made the class draw even in high school. Problem was, I can't draw because of my motor difficulties. Period.

Every time I tried telling them this, they refused to believe me and insisted on it. "Try it," they said, "you should explore new ways of expressing yourself. How bad could it be?" Worse than the work of every other kid in the class was how bad it was!

To cap it all off, I'd usually get a bad mark because it didn't meet their aestetic standards. This was always after they said the drawing didn't have to be good, that it could just be - quote - "stick people." No matter what they said, it had to be "good." It had to be of "normal quality."

Sorry about ranting, but this hypocrisy just makes my blood boil. I had to get it out of my system.

I hate having to draw my family!
Which probably makes it a good test

uuuggghh, hated that test, they gave that thing to me in high school believe it or not, (tehy tested me with the stanford binet test procedures) and when i drew, it was sooo out of proportion it would look like some family from chernybl or some alians (like the one that sits on the in our website name, when i draw a beard, it looks like something that is on bin laden's face, and i hate how also how examiners screen for disorders using this method, (sorry to say cockneyrebel) but with fine motor problem in fingers (as you may tell the backspace key is my best friend on the computer) it might end up in a misdiagnosis for other disorders that the child (or young adult) dont really have.

heres what i was told to draw,

1. family. (disribed above)

2. tree the tree i drew appeared to be some tree in hibernation or dead

3. the house we live in and that one was a terror, drawing individual blades of the vanitian blinds, door handles, window locks, the porch and steps as well as shingles on roof

and all this done without computer or the closer in avator (used it for handwriting and it actually worked)

Haha... my sis and I went to one of those shrinks. We had to draw a tree, a person, and a house. Sis thinks that lady was a bloody quack, but I think she was on to something. She was like, our 4th shrink that year, and probably the first one besides the original one with half a sense.

Course... she then completly looked an ass by telling sis when she was done, 'It looks as though you've had some family trama. Are your parents going thru a divorce? Don't worry, I haven't read your file.' A shrink not reading a patients file... right...

And I completly agree with drawing being difficult... I randomly draw my nightmares, because it helps me deal with them, but I know those things SUCK. If you can tell theres people in there, you have a gift. So I basically spent all of art class skipping or making enough trouble as to 'have' to go to the headmasters. Was awesome wrapped in chocolate, cause he understood me.

This reminds me of a true story I read. A neurotypical seemingly well-adjusted female kindergarterner repeatedly and exclusively submitted crayon and marker drawings only in black with sometimes browns, grays. This can be indicative of a psychological disturbance and may be cause for worry. She tested negative for color-blindness. The school psychologists were confounded. Perhaps being sexualy abused at home? Satanic abuse? Childhood psychosis? What?

Finally, they asked her why. Her cogent answer: Her last name began with the letter Z and therefore sat in the very back of the classroom with assigned seating. By the time the box of crayons/markers reached her desk, the only colors left were black and maybe brown or gray; the other kids naturally choose the 'fun' bright colors and she didn't have any left to choose from. That's it!

Diagnosed from mysteriously 'deeply psychologically disturbed child' to 'ooops, nevermind!'

Sigh.....

Imagine what her family drawing would look like and the subsequent 'diagnosis' due to just her seating arrangement! Someone buy this little girl a box of crayons.

There's only one problem with this test, what happens if you really REALLY suck at drawing?

Technical diagrams are no problem but if you ask me to draw a tree it will look like something from am Elementary School kid, ask me to draw any human or animal and things are even worse. However. Whistle a tune just once and I'll play it for you on the clarinet, I may even improvise a little once I settle in.

Ask me to describe my family using music, no problem, 'Is This The World We Created' by Queen.

Ed Almos

What is REALLY funny/sad is that that happens *******SO******** often! HECK, I recently had a problem happen at work. People asked me to solve it, etc... It wasn't long before I kept referring to occam's razor! Sometimes the simplest answer just IS the best!

I was given the draw test when in 4th or 5th grade (i cant remember which), and I proceeded to draw stick figures.

The sad thing is, I can draw to save my life, but I can create beautiful works of art in photoshop...

I can't draw, and have always disliked being asked to (I'm sure I was by some psychiatric type person at some point). They didn't get anything at all useful from me. I would have just drawn stick figures representing every current person in the house (including non humans of course), which wouldn't tell them anything at all besides who's physically there.

I'm not sure how well I was able to articulate stuff going on for various reasons-but DRAWING it would have just ticked me off and given no useful info.



That is disturbing and hilarious.

You thought you had them fooled, but think again. They look at every little detail in your drawing: where the people are located on paper, how they're positioned, who's drawn next to whom, anything drawn in the background, the colors you use, the thickness of individual lines, how you draw each person, any comments you make while drawing, etc, etc, etc. So in the end, they supposedly get a whole diagnosis about your family situation based on one drawing. In the end, you might have the same situation as the one with that girl sitting in the back of the class. (See above.)

No wonder I freaked out so much when my therapist asked me to draw my family. On one hand, my family life was miserable, and my biggest dream was getting away from home. One the other hand, I was afraid that the therapist might extrapolate that from my drawing, and somehow take my parents' side (e.g. tell them I need more discipline). Luckily, the only thing she eventually said to them was something in the line of "be nicer to him". <sarcasm>That, of course, helped a lot.</sarcasm>

Yes, and as bad as it was, it seemed that it would be even worse if it 'got out' somehow It's such a strange twist of shame and guilt. I guess your refusal to draw your family should have told her more then anything you could have said, but I don't know why she couldn't do more.

I think that's a good idea... It's good for those kids who are afraid of saying things... I sometimes think of drawing what I feel... but I... cant draw so... I sometimes think of pictures of a dark figure sitting down looking weak in a dark room with a ray of light beaming into the room from outside a slightly 'open' door so...

It may be great for SOME kids, but not all. The therapist can't treat it as this be all end all of tests, and just drop it entirely if it's going nowhere.