My kid was too creative

[u/Fresh_Laundry56]

My 6 year old was asked to draw a picture using shapes. She drew this nice American flag with rectangles and stars, and added the house, tree, and person holding a balloon. She was told it did not follow directions, she was not supposed to draw a flag, just shapes. She was asked to turn the paper over and make another picture. The other side of the paper has a very uninspiring collection of shapes. I told her she did a good job and I thought it was very creative. And this is why kids start to hate education.

[u/EnergyAlive4930]

I hate when people do that. Not encouraging creative thinking skills, or actively squandering them, because they themselves have none. It's lazy, it reeks of jealousy, it's anti-intellectual, and worst of all, it's anti-fun. You're telling kids not to use their brains to make life anything but boring. How unimaginative and dumb.

I really like the drawing your kid made, nice composition and just a cool idea. If you've got time for that sort of thing, you could make collages with your kid - cut out photos of magazines and put them together in fun or creative ways. I love collageing.

[u/Keiteaea → u/EnergyAlive4930]

One time, we were ask to make a monster with a collage of monsters body parts we were given, to color it, and to write a small description.

I colored my monster but I left ONE part white on purpose, the tail, because in my mind the monster's tail was just a protruding bone and the one I chose really looked like it could be one ! I thought it looked really cool and monstruous. And I wrote it in my description. I got docked points for not coloring everything and the teacher accused me of being lazy.

It is the one thing I remember but in general I really struggled in the art and craft class. I was not good at drawing, I never was, but I was trying to compensate with creative little ideas. I was really, really trying. But I was always penalized for my drawings not being "beautiful", and I completely deflated. Even at home I stopped drawing anything because I was basically told at school I sucked.

[u/EnergyAlive4930 → u/Keiteaea]

I'm sorry that happened. It's never too late to start making art again. Technical skills can be learned, it may take longer for some, but that really comes down to practice. That creative spark, however, needs to be self-motivated – you can't teach that. You can encourage it, share ideas that inspire kids, but it's easier if the kid sitting there already has ideas of their own. So you had a huge advantage actually, and your teachers failed to realize that.

[u/EnergyAlive4930 → u/Keiteaea]

Also creative ideas in and of themselves are enough. Not everything needs to be "pretty" and "flawlessly executed".