Children and colour - Self-Expression

Colours also help children to express themselves. They like to know rules, but also they like doing silly things. Children, who are allowed to do draw on their own, to choose some coloured items for their room, to choose clothes, are more self-confident and more able to express themselves. Remember, the colour they'll choose may not meet your expectations at all.

Colour is a very useful mean to express certain emotions, especially those hard to express.

Many researches confirm the connection between colour and mood. It's been noticed long ago, that having listened to a fairy tale with the happy end, children get drawing with yellow pencil. And after some sad story they tend to dark brown colours.

What's your child mood? Is he or she happy, excited, sad, frightened or angry? Psychotherapists teach children to distinguish feelings, call them, discuss them in a positive way, using colour. This technique is called 'Colour your life' the best results are achieved with children above six, who know the names of colours and understand their own feelings.

A psychologist gives a child a sheet of paper and a set of crayons of basic colours: yellow, red, blue, green, violet, gray, black and so on. A kid is asked to choose a colour for the named feeling. There are following combinations arising often: red - anger, orange - joy, gray - loneliness. Than a kid is given a blank sheet of paper and asked to draw his or her own feelings. For example if he is sometimes happy, sometimes sad then he or she may use different colours, connected with different moods. It's very interesting to watch what colours a kid chooses, how intensive he uses them and in order they appear on the paper.

Persuasion

Whatever colour activity you choose for your kid, you'd better let him or her choose colours. If you insist on certain colour your child may revolt.  And if you suggest a wrong colour the situation may turn even worse (by the way, if you want to avoid difficulties with colours at some kids' party, with both girls and boys invited, choose neutral concerning gender colours, such as red, dark violet or blue-green).

Colour is a wonderful safe field where children develop their self-affirmation.

As children grow up their colour preferences turn more and more important. This way children try to avoid pressure, influence from the outside and protect their independence. Inn the period from 5 to 10 years old, when school pals and friends influence a kids' life more and more, children expand their colour horizon. Some of them, especially girls, are very proud of their clothes of different colours. These children like drawing with different colours and ask to buy the a set of crayons of 48 or 64 colours. The others, especially boys, expand their colour preferences by including colours of different sports or favourite sports teams. Children like coloured foods disliked by kids of opposite sex and adults. Of course, and it's hard for an adult to understand kids' love to blue worms from chewing gum!

Both boys and girls at this age are seriously influenced by mass media. The colours of the favourite cartoons or TV programs characters become their favourite colours. Children especially like artificial colours widespread nowadays. These colours may reflect light, glitter, they may be metallic or nacreous. Children also like toys changing their colour under certain angle.

When a kid turns into a teenager, his or her interest towards new inexperienced things is expanding and colour preferences are not an exception. Words like 'practical', 'classical' or 'popular' doesn't go with teenagers. Most of all they want to have things, which seem absolutely unacceptable for adults. Blue nail polish? Great! Brown lipstick? Cool!

Teenagers are real colour leaders. Their passion to new unusual things is driving force of the market. For the companies, producing teenagers' clothes, especially girls' products, assortment domination is the matter of survival. They have to offer different colours, including the most unexpected, for their products.

Of course, those teenager products not always meet teenagers' parents expectations. Teenager daughters often argue with their Moms about clothes and make up, and though boys usually don't tell parents what to wear, they are likely to have decided the car of what colour they want to buy. And this colour is surely the ultra-fashionable.