Lions, Tigers, and Bears… oh, my!
why children aren’t creative and teenagers are
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If someone had told me that children were not creative before my doctoral dissertation research, I would have laughed. That’s silly, of course they are! Children are so, so creative—way more than adults.
But then, I discovered Albert Rothenberg’s research on creative adults and he pointed to the teen years as the core foundation for adult creativity.
For the purpose of his theory, Rothenberg limited his definition of creativity to high-level achievements with two traits—newness and value—that had been recognized by established communities, such as adults awarded Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes, or who were members of National Academies, like the National Academy of Sciences.
For the first time, researcher Rothenberg links this adult-level of creative achievement to the type of creative achievements that adolescents (but not children) are both motivated and capable of producing.
In other words, it’s not until your teen years, when your brain becomes wired for specific abilities where you can imagine, and then physically create ideas or artifacts that are a direct forerunner to the creativity you will manifest as an adult.
Enter… Lions, Tigers, and Bears… oh, my!
Sorry, couldn’t resist, mostly because the trio that goes here has waaaay too many syllables to match this iconic, catchy rhythm.
Your support inspires me to reach higher,
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so I can offer you more!Enter… Rothenberg’s three, essential characteristics for creative behavior; the ones initiated in your teens, not your childhood, which carry into your adulthood:
Homospatial
Janusian
… and
A Cognitive Capacity For Formal Operations
Oh, such an academic mouthful. But no worries, in a minute, we’ll break these down into playful, practical concepts.
So, if these key creativity attributes are only physically available after childhood, what do we mean when we say that children are highly creative?
I suspect, as adults, we become painfully aware, and thus learn to adapt to all the implicit and explicit rules of acceptable social behavior. Children’s freedom from the bulk of these rules, and self-imposed restrictions, allows them to do and make things with an innocent spontaneity burdened only by the need to please the adults they care about.
Just like the baby who gurgles before they speak, children first make things for the pure enjoyment of making without self-awareness or the feeling that a larger collective is judging them.
That all changes when the teen years roll around.
It’s not just your body that’s affected by the changes in hormonal complexity, but also your brain. An adolescent brain is an explosion of new wiring that affects absolutely every aspect of your life: relationships, self-awareness, family dynamics, social dynamics, mental capacities, psychological awareness, and creative behavior.
Once we’re an adult, we often bemoan our loss of our childhood freedom and innocence, especially when we feel bogged down by analysis, negative self-reflection, and self-judgment as we create.
Luckily, because we were all teenagers once, we arrive in adulthood filled to the brim with creative capacity.
Let’s look at the three major building blocks underpinning your creative behavior right now, today.
One: HOMOSPATIAL—The Mental Mashup!
This is when you take two different things and smoosh them together in your imagination to create something new. Basically, it’s your brain’s version of putting two random things in a cognitive blender.
Think: Cronut (croissant + donut) or Labradoodle (Labrador + Poodle).
Two: Janusian Thinking—from the Roman God, Janus, who could look forward and backward at the same time
This is the essence of paradox when your brain holds two opposite ideas simultaneously.
This isn’t about compromise or finding a middle ground. It’s when your brain says Why not both?, and creatively uses the tension between two opposing truths.
Think:
- Being a teenager, which is a wild ride of aggravation and excitement.
- Parenting teens, where you want to both hug them and ground them forever.
- Grieving an important loss, where you hold grief and deep gratitude for what used to be.
Three: A Cognitive Capacity for Formal Operations
This is a teenager brain’s super power, an upgrade from concrete thinking to abstract reasoning, where you begin to handle complex thinking that is not based on the five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, taste.
Think:
- Meta-cognition, or the ability to think about thinking: Wait, why am I thinking about this?
- Understanding when someone says I’m fine, they might actually mean the opposite.
And with this third creativity building block, which arrived when you were a teen, comes one more creative ability that is distinct from a child’s ability.
Abstract Analogies and Metaphors
Think, the difference between…
Analogies:
- The moon looks like my sugar cookie. Vs The moon is like sorrow, hanging pale and silent.
- The waves sound like my washing machine. Vs The waves sound like time passing.
Metaphors:
- The bubbles are floating marbles. Vs These bubbles are rainbows of joy!
- The stars are sparkly stickers. Vs The stars are scattered wishes.
Because a child’s brain has not yet developed into abstract reasoning, a child is not yet wired to create at the same level as an adult.
Not until your teen years do you manifest the capacity to create in ways you may, or may not, continue to create as an adult.
For example, you may have started to learn, and love, playing a musical instrument as a child. But it wasn’t until you were a teenager that you “discovered” jazz (or any other creative medium of passionate interest to you), and it was jazz where you landed later on as a creative adult.
Something To Keep In Mind
The connection between teenage creativity and the creative adults who Rothenberg interviewed, is reflected, not in how much teens actively create, but in their growing capacity for adult-like creativity.
For, even though the word, creativity, is a noun—and as such can feel stationary, a thing unchanging—its true nature is to regenerate, to expand, to flow without end, even as, paradoxically, creative behavior contains finite projects characterized by a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Your creativity is so much more than a noun, or an attribute, or a noun-in-action. It’s the very foundation of your identity, even if you don’t consciously acknowledge this, because its genesis began in the delicate, delicious developmental stages when you were a teen.
And like the color of your eyes, or the way you tilt your head, or the notes floating out of the shower, this identity—as an example of the Janusian principle—is both baked-in and simultaneously open-ended.
You are your creativity. Your creativity can only, and always, be you.
How deeply you dive into your creative life, or accept it floating on the surface; how well you nourish your creative longings, or let them wilt from neglect; how many times you experience the thrill of aliveness, or stagnate in the safe zone of the familiar—the inevitable-seeming nature of these choices radically transforms once you activate a resource of aliveness and creativity that lives within you every day, all day—Your Inner Teen.
What’s Next?
It’s tricky because I’m aware that we are working with a paradigm shift, not only in Development Psychology, but for the Collective Consciousness as well.
And I want to give you, Dear Reader, all the stepping stones you need to flow into a creativity gateway that expands, illuminates, and activates your ability be the Original CreativeSelf you truly are, experiencing aliveness at the highest level of creative behavior you are divinely designed to manifest.
So, I thought it was time for Post #18 in our series: Sharpening A Point or… why any of this even matters.
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breathe easier. Your free subscription is splendid.
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Meanwhile, please …
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3. Discover why Inspiration changed from a what to a Who.
Come Meet The Goddess of Inspiration and expand your creativity: an original, guided meditation for any time you hit a roadblock or doubts are taking over.
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