Creative Kids and Conformity
Teaching creative children can be an incredibly challenging experience. Often these children begin to homeschool simply because they are so challenging. Schools, often rooted deeply in facts, figures and conformity, do not know how to cope with the child who sees the world through an imaginative filter. Teachers may confuse imagination with lying, creative solutions with wrong answers, and the refusal to follow instructions as insubordination.
We face two challenges as parents of creative children. First and most importantly, we do not want to quash the creativity our child presents to the world. Imagination is a grand gift and one which can offer a child an enriched and glorious life. On the other hand, there are simply times when such people must conform just a little and we want to teach them when those times are and what to do when they happen. How do we balance the dull rote-thought expectations of the world with the growing creativity in our child?
Admittedly, I have never made it easy for my children’s adult teachers and leaders. When my traditionally-schooled child was required to dictate a factual autobiography and described in detail the pet lion we owned, I was pleased. He would be such good company for the elephant who lived in the freezer. With such a nutty mother, how did my children ever stand a chance? While some teachers set out a seat for the elephant, others found them frustrating or even threatening. I soon realized there might be times when it would be helpful for my children to be able to conform just a little.
Homeschooling did not really solve the problem. I could willingly accept that if I put three cookies on the blue plate and two on the red plate, the answer to the addition problem could be ten if there were also five more invisible cookies on an invisible green plate. However, it required a lot of work to grade papers that were done under these assumptions. And of course, sometimes the children had to take standardized tests that had no place to put creative assumptions, and other times, they simply had to deal with unimaginative adults. So, I had to teach the children that there was a time and a place for everything, and that included conformity.
They had one area already in which they understood that certain types of behavior was not tolerated, and that was church. They knew they had to give sensible, realistic answers there, although their questions could still be interesting and challenging. Challenging a statement was not the same as creating invisible lions to liven up the Bible story. So, building from that, we discussed other situations which required dull answers. We talked about how we had to match our responses to the situation and to the person. I told the children that they would soon learn which grown-ups liked children with imaginations and which did not. I presented it as an issue of good manners. It was rude to annoy people with creative answers if they didn’t like them. Creative answers and rote answers were neither good nor bad by themselves, but there were situations in which each was preferable.
I purchased practice guides for standardized tests. I had the children read the stories and answer the questions. Then we talked about their answers and the answers the testers insisted on. They explained how their answers could be true if certain possibilities were considered. I pointed out that the testers couldn’t provide for every situation, and they had to answer these questions using only the information given. If it doesn’t mention an aunt who secretly steals, there isn’t one. We then had them mark the “correct” answer, but later, they could write their creative solutions, often as stories. I even had them write their own problems and try solving them or letting others solve them. Somehow, it was more annoying when others added imaginary details to the stories they had written!
It was possible to teach them to give conforming answers when the situation called for them without compromising their imaginations. It is simply a matter of teaching children to evaluate the situation and the people to decide what is called for. This skill will improve their ability to function as an employee and in other situations in which dull conformity is required.
