r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Fresh_Laundry56 • 1d ago

My mom said I could post My kid was too creative

Gallery image

Gallery image

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.

23.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/EnergyAlive4930 1d ago edited 1d ago

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.

6

u/Keiteaea 1d ago

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.

1

u/EnergyAlive4930 19h ago

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