Creative Abuse: Protecting The Creative Ability of Our Children

Recently, I have had several people ask me to write a dynamic curriculum that deals with financial literacy but also addresses creative abuse recovery. This opened my eyes that many adults are in need of recovering from being creatively abused as children.

They were told to follow directions and color the sky blue and the grass green. They were told to not go outside the lines .. ever. They were told to conform. They were told that their ‘out side of the box’ ideas were worthless and their grand imaginations had no place in the ‘real world’. They were told…

Now we know it is their grand imaginations companies need to stay competitive. The one thing we all need is the ability to imagine beyond what we see and think creatively about the current problems and the future ones to come.

This caused me to coin the term ‘creative abuse’. Here’s my definition:

Creative Abuse: the tearing down of someone’s creative potential and beliefs in themselves and their creative ability. Creativity is the ability to problem solve with ideas that have relevance, value and novelty (it’s not artistry, though the arts can improve your creative thinking!).

This type of abuse can happen in any place with anyone. Parent to child, teacher to student, manager to employee, employee to employee, husband to wife, wife to husband, peer to peer or family member to family member. Wherever there is a relationship, creative abuse can occur.

Creative abuse is real and it can be just as serious as other types of abuse. It is almost always an add-on to other abuses. People dealing with physical, sexual, verbal or financial abuse tend to also lack the self-esteem and courage to thrive creatively.

Yet, it can also stand alone. You can, with the sweetest voice (and the sweetest intentions as well) tell a child that their idea is foolish or stupid and to not have the faith or the courage to try to move forward on their idea. You can, without knowing it, instill the fear of trying and strip down any inherent courage they previously had to attempt the unknown.

It’s possible to be unaware that you are causing your child, student or employee to doubt themselves, their potential and the beauty of their original imaginative ideas. It’s possible….

Earl Nightingale once noted, “The greatest obstacle to growth and development to learning and improved function is discouragement. Doubt in one’s own ability. First, when we do for them which they can do for themselves or we scold them for attempting to do the unknown. In either case, a child is robbed of the experience of their own strength.”

We need to stop physical, sexual and verbal abuse for sure. Likewise, in this time of unprecedented change and massive technological advancement, we also need to address and eradicate the creative abuses happening all around us because it not only affects the person or child being abused but it affects all of us too.

That child who was once excited to build a wild concoction in his garage got shot down by an over bearing parent and now will no longer attempt to dream or experiment. Consequently, we lost out on the invention of the century that was buried deep inside him.

The young woman who took an hour to muster up the courage to share her idea within her team, shrinks behind the snickers of her secretly jealous teammates, vows to never share again and just ‘go along with the flow’.  Her company is now robbed of her next innovative idea and was taken over by a disruptive market that she spotted earlier on.

Groupthink at its worst.  Blockbuster anyone?

Creative abuse is real and costly.

This is the time where we need our children, our students and our workforce to have faith in their ability to ideate, share, develop their creative thinking and have faith in the power of their ideas.

Now is the time.

Create and encourage someone’s creations today.