Why do we punish creativity in kids and praise it in adults?
I’ve noticed something interesting about our society’s approach to creativity: we punish it in children and praise it in adults.
When adults find creative solutions, they often get rewarded with praise, promotions, or new opportunities. But when children find creative solutions for things, they are often punished. This happened to me all the time as a kid.
In high school, I once organized an impromptu fundraiser to buy a gorilla suit (it’s a long story). That afternoon, I got called down to the office.
My principal said, “Kyle, are you aware of what the handbook has to say about solicitation?”
It just so happened that I was aware, because I had read the handbook cover to cover at the beginning of the year looking for… let’s say… opportunities.
So I quoted from memory what the handbook had to say. My principal looked surprised, then quickly spun around to grab his own copy of the handbook from the bookshelf. As he rifled through it, I couldn’t help myself.
I said, “Mr. Hetherington, are you aware of what the handbook has to say about solicitation?”
The next year, they changed the handbook.
If this sort of thing had happened once or twice, it would’ve been a bummer. But when it happened to me over and over again, the message that seeped into my brain was, “Creative solutions get punished. If you come up with one, it’s only a matter of time before they close the door on you.”
But one of my teachers took a different approach.
We were playing a version of “the floor is lava”, where each team had to make it across the classroom by using two long boards. The idea was to have everyone stand on one board, slide the other board forward, then step onto that board and repeat.
The competition was timed, and I wanted our team to win. So I waited until every other team had gone, then pointed out that if we moved laterally, we could make it to the desks that had been pushed against the wall. Once we got there, we could scramble across the desks and make it across the classroom in record time.
So that’s what we did. And we blew every other team out of the water.
I was waiting for my teacher to say “That’s not what you were supposed to do.” But instead he looked genuinely impressed, and he said “Very creative, guys. Well done. That’s a new record!”
Not only did that moment restore my faith in adults, it also made me want to keep trying creative solutions in that teacher’s class.
I learned an important lesson that day:
The way you respond to unexpected creative behavior determines whether people keep being creative around you.
It doesn’t take much to change a person’s creative trajectory. It doesn’t even take excessive praise or adulation. It just takes being open to novel solutions, focusing on the result rather than the method, and resisting the urge to immediately shut down ideas that are outside the norm.
When someone in your family, your business, or your community tries something unexpected, you have two choices: you can make a new rule to prohibit what they’ve done, or you can step back and say “Very creative, guys. Well done.”
