So yesterday, I was doing a little bit of painting. I realized I was pretty terrible at it so I stopped. Thinking back to my childhood, I almost never gave up on a task just because I sucked at it. I think the same should apply for most kids nowadays. Children have such a huge potential in terms of learning and development. This potential is bolstered by their confident creativity as children. Or at least, it used to be that way.
My dad and I were talking about it a couple days ago; he was saying how my cousins are growing up a lot differently than I am, not just because of parentage, but because they never had to learn about stuff on their own. I guess it’s not a bad thing, it just seems like they’re growing up too quickly.
It is quite interesting to think about since many parents will say that their kids are growing up too quickly. It seems to be the case that children maturing more quickly is the problem that parents are facing. Children tend to focus more on getting things right rather than having fun with it; that’s just a priority society has, that’s being pushed on the younger generations earlier than it needs to be. Just as an example, my friend sent me an email which I had seen floating around on the internet before. It’s an image with a caption attached to it:
This image was a homework assignment from a young girl. The following is the response her teacher received the next day:
Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not, nor have I ever been, an erotic dancer. I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole. It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had a Home Depot. From now on, I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns in it.
Mrs. Smith
As funny as it is, it is also kind of sad that we have to explain on behalf of the child, while trying to ensure that the child doesn’t repeat this train of thought. Sure it’s not a good thing for the child to be depicting pole dancers, much less their mother as a pole dancer, but if that’s not what the child has in mind, why should you censor their creativity? I guess the question that needs to be asked of this is how we should approach the problem of a child’s creativity versus the adult’s desire for perfection.That is the issue that needs to be faced.
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