Children's kinetic family drawings and their internalizing problem behaviors

The current paper aims to identify whether kinetic family drawings (KFD) are useful to identify internalizing problems of preschoolers. We divided 120 preschoolers into two groups based on their scores of an internalizing problem behavior test and the KFD of the two groups were compared. Except for a few sub-categories, we found some significant differences in most subcategories between these two groups. This contrast suggests that projective approaches using the KFD are useful in evaluating the cognitive characteristics of a family in order to understand a child's internalizing problem behaviors. The usefulness of an approach using the KFD in education and clinical fields are also discussed.

► We examine the usefulness of the kinetic family drawing (KFD) in identifying internal problems.
► We figure out the factors that represent internal problem behaviors in the KFD.
► Projective approaches using the KFD are useful in understanding a child's internal problem behaviors.
► The KFD can be used as a basic data to predict and mediate internal problem behaviors of children.