I Can Always Tell What My Kids Drew. I Never Know Why.

My son drew this. It's called Macaroon 5. Take a second and decide what you think is going on.

If you're anything like me, you went straight to the band. Five macarons, a name that sounds like Maroon 5, a big one in sunglasses out front like a lead singer. Clever kid.

Here's what he actually said about it:

"Macaroons are so yummy. Just picture 5 of them, it's even better!"

That's it. No pun. No joke. He likes macarons, and he worked out that five would be better than one.

I want to sit with that for a second, because I got it wrong in a specific way. I didn't just misidentify the picture. I assumed his reasoning worked like mine. A wordplay on a band name is the kind of thing an adult finds funny. He was doing straightforward math about dessert, which is both simpler and, honestly, better.

What children's drawings mean, when you ask the child

I've now done this hundreds of times, with my own kids and with families who use our platform, and the pattern is remarkably consistent: adults guess wrong.

Not slightly wrong. Wrong in a way that misses the entire idea.

A cat with a stream of scribble coming out of its mouth turns out to be "a cat that spits and fails school." A figure with dramatic eyelashes turns out to be named after a flight attendant who gave a kid a pin on a plane. A seahorse has someone's name written across it for a reason that has nothing to do with seahorses.

We look at children's drawings and see what they resemble. Children draw what they mean.

Sometimes the reasoning is layered. My son drew a giraffe with a chunk missing from its head, and when I asked, it turned out the missing piece was from the moment Iron Man snapped his fingers and everything bad turned to dust. The dots above are the dust. The head is shaped like a paint palette, which is why there's red splattered on it. It's holding a fish because he sleeps with a fish stuffy. The eyelash under the eye refers to a different character he'd invented.

Five decisions in one drawing, and I'd have guessed none of them.

Other times the reasoning is Macaroon 5. Five is better than one, because macarons are good.

Both are thinking. Neither is random.

This is not a small distinction

If a drawing is a picture of something, then a child who draws a lopsided house has produced a poor picture of a house. If a drawing is a piece of reasoning, that same child has produced an idea, and there's nothing there to grade.

The education world has a name for this. Universal Design for Learning treats expression as something people need multiple routes into, because writing and speaking are not equally available to every learner. Drawing is one of those routes. Not a warm-up for the real thing, not a decorative skill. A channel.

The Neurodiversity and Universal Design for Learning Guide, published this year by NYSCI, Explora, the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, EDC, and JSC with support from the National Science Foundation, puts a version of this in practical terms.

On facilitation, it says: "Inviting learners to take a moment to describe what they did or what they made can invite learners to reflect on the parts of the experience that were meaningful for them." It then lists ways to make that possible, and the list is the point. Telling someone about what you made. Drawing or writing. Taking a photo, video, or voice memo.

Then there's this, from what they observed families actually doing in one activity:

"We saw many families working together to add details (such as children telling their caregivers what to write)."

Children telling their caregivers what to write.

That's the whole thing, and nobody had to be prompted into it. Researchers went looking at how families behave in a museum and found parents acting as scribes for their kids, because the child had something to say about what they'd made and wanted it recorded.

Worth noting how that guide was made, too. Alongside the educators, designers, and researchers, it lists dozens of young co-designers. A guide about taking neurodivergent minds seriously was built with the people it's about, and they were credited for it.

Same instinct, one step further along.

What gets lost when we skip it

The drawing survives. Someone takes a photo, or it goes on the fridge, or into a folder in a drawer.

The reasoning behind it does not survive. Within days it's gone, including from the child.

So what's preserved is the artifact stripped of the thinking. It's a bit like keeping the answer sheet and throwing away the working, then wondering later why the answers don't tell you much.

I've asked my own children about drawings from a year earlier and watched them shrug. They know they made it. They no longer know why.

The cost of guessing

There's a version of this that goes further than lost memories.

When adults look at a drawing and say "oh, is that a bunny?", we're not just guessing. We're telling the child what the drawing should have been. Enough of those and a child learns that the goal is recognizability, that a drawing succeeds when an adult can name it.

That's the point at which some kids stop. Not because they lost interest, but because they've worked out they're bad at something they were never actually doing.

The children who keep going are often the ones who were asked rather than told.

What to do instead, and it costs nothing

Ask.

Not "what is it," which sounds like a test and implies you should have known. Something more like "tell me about this one," or "what's happening here."

Then write down what they say, in their words, not your tidied-up version. "A cat that spits and fails school" is worth infinitely more in a year than "cat drawing, age 6."

That's it. That's the whole practice.

We built a company around making that easy to do and keep, but you do not need us for this. You need a phone, ten seconds, and the discipline not to guess first.

What I'd like more people to try

Next time a child hands you something they made, sit with it for a moment before you react.

Look at it and privately decide what you think it is.

Then ask them.

You'll probably get the subject right. Kids draw better than we give them credit for, and a giraffe usually looks like a giraffe. What you won't get is the reason, and the reason is almost always better than anything you'd have come up with.

That's the part worth keeping, and it's the part that disappears if nobody asks in time.

---

pixyit is where families keep their children's creativity, the artwork, the stories, the way they explain things, and turn favorite pieces into something they'll actually use. We built it so kids feel proud of their own ideas and find out early that their creativity can do some good. Start a free Family Gallery at pixyit.com.

If you work at a museum, school, or program and this sounds like your world, we'd love to talk. partners@pixyit.com