Won't somebody think of the children

I’ve been working with children lately. I have been astonished and astounded by how creative they are. It must be physiological. It’s just a fact that they flick an instantaneous switch and suddenly there’s a connection that wasn’t there before.

I was attempting at one point to link some of the stories we had written together. I said to one of the kids, ‘Hey so I’m trying to link this story about a painting of a face to this other story about a series of secret underground tunnels beneath a school. Any ideas?’ This kid, who had been staring out the window, thought for a second and then said, ‘Nostrils are tunnels’.

And just like that, we had a link. Our main character crawled through a nostril which became a portal to a series of tunnels under a school. It was the easiest thing in the world for this kid to do. They were flexible, too. I changed things on them more than once and they absolutely went with it, coming up with ways of making it better as we went. I honestly thought, ‘I need to take these kids with me to the next writers room I’m in’.

I’ve been reading up on it since. Do we drum the creativity out of them? Is their underdeveloped brains that make connections we can’t make because ours can do boring things like see potential consequences? It’s a bit of both apparently. I recommend it to anybody creative. Except if it’s late in the afternoon on a Friday and it’s over, say, 15 degrees centigrade. Give that session a miss. You’re welcome.