Three year old's drawings

[typhoonsmum]

DD has recently really started to draw. The drawings are quite impressive and she is told how good she is at it.
Whilst showing DP one of her drawings today he noticed that all the people had sad faces and tears coming from their eyes. I felt bad that I hadn't noticed and even worse that my three year old is drawing sad people. Every so often there is a happy face but most of them are sad.
There hasn't been any upset in the family recently.(I m/c in may and august but she never knew about them)
She sometimes gets upset when we go to work but we have both been working since she was 12 weeks old so that,i thought,was just normal to her.
I actually feel quite upset by these pictures and am wondering if there is anything I can do to help her. She is in bed now and fast asleep so I don't want to disturb her.

ANY IDEAS

I'd talk to her when she is next drawing and get her to tell you what the people are doing. That might give you some insight.

What does she say about them?

Where is she doing the drawings? If at nursery, maybe she is just missing you?

Ds1 and dd often do this, not because that's what they say, but to be contrary - I sometimes say 'give them a nice smiley face' and they will say 'no they are sad'.

I would just ask her in a non-heavy way to describe to you who the people are, and what they are doing, and ask her how they feel, and why. There might be a simple explanation.

she does them in the front room whilst watching her dvd's She told me that they were of her. I noticed one sad face this afternoon but on closer looking there are four sad faces. each with tears. She is prone to tempers after all she is three so I thought she'd drawn that face when she was in a bad mood but not all four of them

dd goes thru phases when she draws only sad faces, or only happy faces, or, weirdly, happy people and sad animals (or vice-versa). At first I otoo freaked and guilted a bit, but it seems to me perfectl normal and a healthy exploration of feelings - and of other people's reactions to her drawings. TBH I wouldn't worry about it. If you like you could ask her about the pictures - don't ask "Why are they sad?" until well into the conversation, but lots of other "W" questions - what, where, who, how etc.

When mine was about 3 she drew a lot of sad faces because that was just the way her smiles came out

she didn't mean to, and would often be pissed off "Oh no, look it's sad" and then added tears afterwards

It wasn't intentional, she was just crap at drawing

My 3 year old draws both happy and sad people when I was sad last year she knows it was something to do with my mum having died years ago and whenever she draws a sad face she often says 'he/she is sad because he/she has lost his mummy' she then draws another person and says 'now he/she's not sad anymore because his mummy is here.' It makes me choke up everytime but also shows that sometimes drawings help them explain things to themselves. I will also note she drew a sad person the other day and said he was sad because his mummy and dad have left him to go out for a drink (dp and I have not gone out together for ages) so sometimes a picture is just a picture!

it could just be that once she drew a crying face and realised how easy it was to draw an emotion this way. If she does not seem sad in any other way I would not worry.

When my ds was 4 he would draw me, ds, dd and daddy lying down - when asked about it told that daddy was dead. It happened repeatedly and I got upset thinking he wanted daddy to die or he was having some weird prediction. Then one day he just stopped, started drawing snails instead!

If it is upsetting you could draw with her and show her a few other things, tell her her other drawings are good? MAybe she will just hook onto somthing else.

Snowman please don't panic, the variation in what they can do at this age is huge. My ds is 3.7 and can just about do a face and if prompted, some body parts. Left to himself he just does squiggles and circles and he can't write his name at all - nor recognise it.

He is a smart boy and this is quite within the range of normal for this age group. It's fatal to compare with another child without looking at a large group of children to see the variation.

don't worry janitor

When I look at dd's peers' pictures on the nursery walls, most of them are incoherent scribbles - they are 4. There are usually only one or two which are coherent (saw one the other day that was a spider - big black blob with about 400 legs, bless, I just LOVE kids' drawings)