The Moment It Clicks
Watch a toddler with a crayon and you will see them scribble freely across the page – loops, zigzags, dots – whatever feels good. But at some point during the early years, something changes. They start to make marks that look different when they are "writing" versus when they are "drawing".
This shift is called writing-drawing differentiation, and researchers have identified it as an important milestone in how children come to understand symbolic systems – the idea that marks on a page can represent meaning in different ways.
Why Is This Hard to Spot?
To an untrained eye, a toddler's early writing and drawing attempts can look remarkably similar – both may appear as scribbles. The differences are often subtle and require careful analysis to detect. That is why researchers developed specific methods to identify whether a child has reached this milestone.
What the Research Tells Us
The understanding that writing and drawing serve different purposes emerges gradually during the preschool years. Pioneering researchers Emilia Ferreiro and Ana Teberosky studied how young children develop concepts about written language, finding that children construct their own theories about how writing works – and distinguishing it from drawing is a foundational step.
Rhoda Kellogg's extensive research on children's art documented how early mark-making evolves through predictable stages, from random scribbles to controlled marks to recognisable shapes. Her work showed that children's graphic development follows universal patterns across cultures, providing the foundation for understanding how children later come to distinguish drawing from writing.
More recent research by Adi-Japha and Freeman found that around age 6, children show a clear transition where writing and drawing become separate cognitive systems – with writing becoming more fluent than drawing, and the two systems beginning to operate independently. However, the conceptual understanding that writing and drawing are different begins much earlier, in the toddler years.
Key Research Findings
Ferreiro & Teberosky (1982) showed that children develop hypotheses about writing that progress through identifiable stages, beginning with distinguishing writing from drawing.
Adi-Japha & Freeman (2001) found a transition around age 6 where writing and drawing become separate production systems, though conceptual differentiation begins earlier.
Tolchinsky (2003) demonstrated that early understanding of notational systems predicts later literacy development.
Pinto et al. (2022) confirmed a stable association between drawing and writing development in 3-5 year olds, traced to their common representational core.
Why Does This Milestone Matter?
Writing-drawing differentiation matters because it gives us a window into a child's cognitive development. When a child starts to treat writing differently from drawing, they are showing us that they have grasped something important: that writing is a special kind of mark-making with its own conventions.
Children who have reached this milestone are demonstrating that they:
- Recognise that writing and drawing serve different purposes
- Have started to notice how writing looks and behaves differently
- Are building their understanding of symbolic systems
- Are on their way in the journey toward literacy
This does not mean children need to know their letters yet. The milestone is about understanding what writing is – not yet knowing how to do it.
What Can Knowing This Tell You?
Most children reach this milestone naturally through everyday exposure to books, writing, and adults who read and write around them. But every child develops at their own pace.
A Window, Not a Prediction
Knowing where your child is on this journey helps you understand their current thinking about writing – and what experiences might support them next. It is insight into their development, not a prediction of their future.
When parents and educators understand what a child has already figured out about writing, they can provide the right kinds of experiences – not too advanced, not too basic – to support the child's continued development.
Supporting Your Child's Journey
Whatever stage your child is at, there are simple ways to support their growing understanding of writing:
- Pointing out writing in the environment – signs, labels, books
- Letting children see you write lists, notes, and messages
- Reading books and talking about how the words and pictures work together
- Providing varied mark-making opportunities with different materials
- Celebrating children's early attempts at both drawing and writing
However, knowing exactly where your child is on this developmental journey is not something you can easily see at home. The differences between early writing and drawing attempts are subtle and require trained analysis to interpret.
Understanding where your child is now helps you meet them there – providing experiences that support their development without pressure.
Understand Your Child's Early Writing Journey
Our Starter tool gives you insight into where your child is in their understanding of writing – plus guidance on how to support them.
Try the Starter Tool – £20References
Adi-Japha, E., & Freeman, N. H. (2001). Development of differentiation between writing and drawing systems. Developmental Psychology, 37(1), 101-114.
Ferreiro, E., & Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy Before Schooling. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.
Kellogg, R. (1969). Analyzing Children's Art. Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books.
Levin, I., & Bus, A. G. (2003). How is emergent writing based on drawing? Analyses of children's products and their sorting by children and mothers. Developmental Psychology, 39(5), 891-905.
Pinto, G., Bigozzi, L., Vezzani, C., & Tarchi, C. (2022). The relationship between emergent drawing, emergent writing, and visual-motor integration in preschool children. Infant and Child Development, 31(1), e2284.
Puranik, C. S., & Lonigan, C. J. (2011). From scribbles to scrabble: Preschool children's developing knowledge of written language. Reading and Writing, 24(5), 567-589.
Tolchinsky, L. (2003). The Cradle of Culture and What Children Know About Writing and Numbers Before Being Taught. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.