BTW, your nine year old is an adolescent. Girls start early, menstruation actually doesn’t start until halfway through the process. And if you think she’s a handful now, wait until her pre-frontal lobes come on line.

Anyway, thanks for the comment, Jana.

Perhaps the “problem” kid has his own little world in his head and if that teacher had any sense she’d have let him express it. How does she know what a giraffe really looks like to him? Maybe they really are blue with big red spots. How can she be so sure just because most of us believe they look different?

Sheesh….

I think we are born working and thinking creatively and that, if anything, growing up in some cases–depending on surroundings and upbringing–can stifle creativity if a person is continually beaten down or told not to think outside the box. Because I think our default IS the creative; I see that in children all the time (except, again, in ones whose avenues of creative thought are continually being closed down–which may be a factor of them being told to avoid “new connections”).

In a past life, I was a computer programmer. I think non-programmers wouldn’t generally consider this a creative job, but it very much is. And the ways I’ve had to be creative in programming very much inform the paths I follow in writing.

Programming is essentially logical problem solving. What is the most efficient, elegant solution to the problem at hand? It’s similar when I write. I have to make up the problem myself, but once I do that, I find myself thinking, “What’s the most elegant, interesting way they can get themselves out of this?”

(For more connections between programming and writing, that are too large to explore in this comment, try The Myst Reader).