Draw-a-Person, House-Tree-Person and the family drawing test, explained
Search for “child psychology drawing test” and you get the impression there is a test you can give at the kitchen table, score in ten minutes, and learn the truth about your child. There are real drawing tests. They are not that, and it is worth knowing what they actually are before a list of “indicators” convinces you of something.
Two very different kinds of test
The drawing tests you read about fall into two families that get mixed up constantly.
Developmental scoring counts what is in the drawing. How many body parts, whether the proportions are roughly right, whether there are clothes, a neck, the right number of fingers. The count is compared with what children of the same age usually include, and the result is a rough estimate of cognitive maturity.
Projective interpretation reads the drawing for meaning. The idea is that a child projects their inner life onto the page, so the size of a figure, the pressure of the line, or a missing door on a house can be decoded as a feeling.
The first family has held up reasonably well for its narrow purpose. The second has not, and almost every red-flag list online descends from it.
Draw-a-Person
Florence Goodenough published the Draw-a-Man test in 1926, and Dale Harris revised it in the 1960s into the version most people mean by Draw-a-Person. A child is asked to draw a person, and the drawing is scored point by point: head present, legs present, arms attached to the trunk, fingers the right number, and so on through dozens of items.
The score correlates moderately with other measures of a child’s intellectual development. It is quick, children enjoy it, and it does not depend on language, which is why it is still used as one small part of a wider assessment, especially with very young children or children who do not speak the examiner’s language.
What it does not do is say anything about personality, mood or family life. That was never the claim. A child who dislikes drawing, or who rushed, or who is going through a stage of drawing everyone as a robot, will score below their ability, and any competent examiner knows it.
House-Tree-Person, Machover, and the family drawing
The projective tests came a little later. Karen Machover’s version of Draw-a-Person in 1949 proposed that the figure a child draws is a self-portrait of the inner self. John Buck’s House-Tree-Person in 1948 added a house and a tree, each supposedly reflecting a different aspect of the child’s world. The Kinetic Family Drawing from Burns and Kaufman in 1970 asks a child to draw their family doing something, and reads who is placed where, who is largest, and who is left out.
Each came with a manual of hypotheses. Large heads suggested one thing, shading another, a tree with no roots something else. Those hypotheses, more or less verbatim, are what circulate today as warning signs.
How well they hold up
Not well. From the 1990s onward, reviews of the research asked a plain question: when trained clinicians score the same drawings, do they agree, and do the indicators separate children with known difficulties from children without them? The answers were, respectively, often not and mostly not. Individual signs appeared in the drawings of typical children about as often as in clinical groups.
Global impressions did slightly better than sign-by-sign decoding. An experienced clinician looking at a whole drawing, in the room, with the child, can form a useful hunch. But a hunch is not a measurement, and the reviewers were clear that projective drawings should not be used to make decisions about a child.
Emotional indicator systems like Elizabeth Koppitz’s, which score specific features as possible signs of distress, sit in between. Some items do turn up a little more often in groups of children who are struggling. That is a statement about groups. For one child in front of you it tells you almost nothing, because the same feature is common in children who are fine.
What a professional actually does with a drawing
Watch a good child psychologist use a drawing and the drawing itself turns out to be the least of it. They watch how the child approaches the task: eagerly, reluctantly, asking for rules. They watch the process, what gets drawn first, what gets erased, where the child hesitates. They ask about the picture and listen to how the child talks. And then they set the drawing next to everything else: the developmental history, the parents’ account, the teacher’s account, observation of the child at play, and standardized instruments that have actually been validated.
The drawing is a way in. It relaxes a nervous child, it gives them something to do with their hands while they talk, and it gives the clinician a few things to be curious about. It is almost never the evidence.
Why you cannot run one at home
Not because it is secret. Because the things that make a scored drawing mean anything are things you do not have at the table.
You do not have the age norms, so you cannot tell whether twelve body parts is a lot or a little for a child of five and a half. You do not have the manual, which spends pages on what counts as an arm. And you cannot be blind to the child. You know this is the kid who cried at breakfast, and you will see it in the drawing whether it is there or not.
Your child also knows they are being tested, and children draw differently for a test than for fun. What you get is a drawing of a child being watched.
What you can do at home instead
Watch the process, which is what the professionals value most anyway. Notice whether your child draws eagerly or has to be coaxed, whether they plan or dive in, what they narrate while the pen moves.
Keep drawings with the date on the back and look at them a few months apart. Development shows in the sequence: a neck that appeared, a baseline that arrived, hands that went from stumps to bunches of fingers. That progression is real, visible, and far more informative than any single score.
And ask. “Tell me about this one” gets you more than any manual.
When a formal assessment makes sense
If a teacher or your pediatrician has raised a question about your child’s development, learning or mood, a referral for assessment is the right route, and a drawing may be one small part of it. That is fine. Ask what the drawing is for, and expect the answer to be “to help them settle and give us something to talk about,” rather than “to find out what is wrong.” If you are told that a drawing revealed a diagnosis, ask what else the conclusion rests on. A good clinician will have a long answer.
Questions parents ask
Can I do the Draw-a-Person test at home?
You can ask your child to draw a person, and you should, because it is a nice thing to have. You cannot score it meaningfully. The scoring depends on age norms, a detailed manual, and a scorer who does not already know and love the child. Without those, the number means nothing.
Is the House-Tree-Person test scientifically valid?
As a developmental snapshot, a little. As a way of reading personality or emotional problems from specific features, the research reviews say no. Two trained clinicians looking at the same drawing frequently reach different conclusions, which is the definition of an unreliable measure.
What does it mean if my child scored low on a Draw-a-Person test?
On its own, very little. The score is a rough estimate of how many details and proportions a child includes compared with others their age, and it is affected by interest, practice and mood on the day. Ask the person who gave it what else they looked at, because a drawing score is never supposed to stand alone.
Do schools use drawing tests?
Some school psychologists include a drawing in a broader assessment, usually to help a child relax and to have something to talk about. It is rarely the basis of any decision, and if it were, you would be right to ask questions.
Is DrawReport a drawing test?
No. We do not score children or look for indicators. We describe what is visible in a drawing against the ordinary stages of children’s art, suggest what it may say about where a child is right now, and give you questions to ask them. It is educational, and it is not an assessment of your child.
This article is general information about how children draw, not advice about your child. It is not a diagnosis, a screening tool, or a substitute for a professional who knows your child. If something worries you, your pediatrician, a child psychologist, or a teacher who sees your child every day is the person who can give you a recommendation.
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