Scribbling stage

The scribbling stage is the first stage in the development of drawing in the child . At this stage, there is no realism in the drawings and most of them are just marks and lines on a sheet. It may seem that there is nothing there, but sometimes children create something called “random realism.” This means that when scribbling, you may be able to see certain shapes or drawings in what appear to be simple marks.

Scribbling begins at 15 months , when the child is already able to take a pencil and make movements on top of a page. But this psychological stage is marked from the age of two –  since it is when the child develops his emotions in a more controlled way –  and continues until approximately four years of age .

Scribbling is the beginning of a new stage of cognitive development where the child begins to control his fine motor skills. In the same way that the child begins to discover his limbs as part of his body and the control he has over them; he also begins to recognize his ability to move and control objects.

At the beginning of the scribbling stage, the child is not drawing symbolic objects, nor is he trying to make a representation of something he saw or felt, he is simply drawing for the pleasure of drawing. When children doodle, they feel comfortable because they have the opportunity to move freely and discover new hidden skills for them. The act of scribbling is purely kinesthetic and imaginative.

Doodling benefits

When they begin to doodle, children are exploring art materials in a playful way, learning colors, textures and shapes according to what they are drawing. Scribbles go from uncontrolled to progressively more controlled as the child develops cognitively .

Scribbling stimulates children in: their physical and cognitive development, visual-motor coordination (eye-hand), manipulation of elements, motor strength, fine and thick muscle development, naming and identification of graphics, communication, direction, independence and self-confidence .

According to research, some children who suffer from certain types of developmental disorders were interrupted or under-stimulated in the doodle stage, delaying it, therefore delaying the next stages of development.

Scribble shapes

Scribbling appears in different forms.

1. Messy scribbling
2. Controlled scribbling
3. Scribble with name

Messy scribbling

At this stage you have to observe how the child takes the pencil, as a graph and the intention to fill the sheet. Stripes appear , the lines are made at random, there is no intention, no visual control or intention to represent something; what there is is a need to experiment, almost impulsive . In turn, they are large drawings as the child feels at this age.

Controlled scribbling

At two and a half or three years, the child has greater control of his motor skills and begins to control what he draws. These movements appear more dominated, so there begins to be a  visual-motor coordination between the movements and the line on the paper , but there will not be a relationship between the graphical object and its representation, that is, there will be no relationship between the real object and what the child draws at least for the adult.

At about three years of age, the child may be  able to imitate a circle, but not a square;  you can use colors of different textures  and enjoy noticing their differences and grouping them together.

Scribble with name

There is now a relationship between what you graph and the environment . There is the possibility of a more imaginative thought , imagine for example that what you drew is the mother. The intention appears but the intention also changes since what begins as the mother can end up being the grandmother. The color at this stage is secondary and what matters is the line and the progressive, gradual attempt to shape what is  depicted .