In order to determine the potential effects of art therapy on eliminating behaviors of infant refusal to attend kindergarten due to post-traumatic stress, this study applied total 20 cycles of art therapy to infants(once a week; 50 minutes). To determine the possible effects of art therapy, this study observed the psychologic transition of infants and allowed parents,
teacher and art therapist to monitor infant behaviors using Korean child behavioral check
list(K-CBCL) and landscape montage technique(LMT), so that it could compare and analyze
the changing conditions of infants before and after both tests. Furthermore, this study also
looked into the transitional courses of removing the behaviors of infant refusal to attend
kindergarten in the course of art therapy.
In view of findings hereof, it was found that infants' refusal to attend kindergarten was
attributed to their own strong affections inseparable to mother due to her over-response to
slight physical diseases, as shown in theory of post-traumatic stress.
In case of mother's attitude to nurturing her child, her emotional and behavioral changes
were fed forward to child via counseling with her in the course of art therapy, while
anxiety index was reduced in emotion of child's anxiety about separation from mother.
As the result of K-CBCL test, itwas found that infants scored high points at pretest
items like atrophy, depression/anxiety, social immaturity and thinking problems, while
scoring relatively low points at post-test.
Summing up, it is concluded that art therapy has positive influence on motivating infants
who refused to attend kindergarten - a symptomatic aftereffect of post-traumatic stress -
to remove behaviors of refusal.
Key Words : Art therapy, post-traumatic stress, refusal to attend kinder-garten