I’ve been thinking a lot about how often kids confuse pressure for play. Pressure says: “Do this right.” “Don’t mess up.” “This counts.” Play says: “Let’s see what happens.” “Try this.” “You can change it.” Here’s the tricky part. Many kids only experience play inside pressure. They learn that even creative spaces are evaluated. Even open tasks are graded. Even curiosity is performative. So when we say, “Just have fun with it,” what they often hear is: “Be playful, but don’t fail.” That’s not play. That’s pressure wearing a costume. True play has no immediate payoff. No guarantee of success. No clear endpoint. It invites the subconscious to join the conscious mind. It allows ideas to surface before they’re judged. It lets kids stand in uncertainty without shame. When that space disappears, perfectionism rushes in to fill the gap. So here’s a question I’m sitting with, and I’d love to hear your thoughts: Where in your kid’s (or your own) life has play quietly turned into pressure? And what might it look like to give play its space back, even briefly? No fixing. Just noticing.

That job interview. That carefully chosen program. That exam, tryout, trip, or next step we quietly pinned our hopes on. When it falls apart, it’s not funny. Not even a little. It hurts. It’s disappointing. And it usually sucks for everyone nearby, too. But if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve probably noticed something else happens next. When you don’t arrive where you planned to be, you end up where you were meant to be. I’m not a religious guy. This isn’t about destiny or divine intervention. It’s just an observation: nearly every life-altering turn in my life arrived after a plan collapsed. My parents moved across the province during my Grade 12 year, completely out of my control. I went to the University of Guelph on what amounted to a random choice, having never even visited. It turned out to be transformative. I met lifelong friends. I learned how to paint from amazing artists. I found my direction. Ottawa came next, simply because it accepted me for teaching. More friendships. More roots. Nova Scotia followed for my master’s degree. I met my wife in Halifax, and then I stumbled into the rare chance to build a new art program in the Annapolis Valley, and somehow never left. I raised my kids here. I built a life here. I still wake up grateful for the people, the work, the outdoors, and the community. None of it was planned. In 2018, the job I thought was my “next step” was filled internally. Another crash. Another disappointment. But because that door closed, I earned my doctorate from Calgary without leaving home. Something I never could have imagined while clinging to the original plan. If any of those plans had worked out the way I intended, I wouldn’t be here sitting in a café on a snow day, reflecting on how often the crash delivered better outcomes than the plan ever promised. I mean, it happened in my best artworks too. Artists understand the classic sneeze on a litho-stone, the hand slipping on the last stroke in a portrait, the charcoal getting in the graphite. Ironically, these incidents brought the freedom of chaos that I responded to by integrating the splatter, scraping away the uptight perfection, and mixing the mediums to arrive at a much more exciting work!

Sticks and stones are what break your bones so why do we let words hurt us? When those we love and care for say hurtful things about themselves or towards others, especially us, it’s easy to let them land. Even when we know most often what they’re saying rarely has much to do with the feelings that spurred them. I know from being a parent and a teacher how hard it is to see clearing through the forest of emotions and words that cloud what’s really going on. I’ve learned how great leaders navigate these emotions in adults and teens, to find that we need to do the internal work along with the relational. If we practice opening our senses in concert with an open playful mind, we can navigate the feelings and probe past the words to find hopeful paths forward. I apply these principles daily with my most challenging students to find that what I’m often looking at his fear and all they need is calm open permissive support, and some direction to get unstuck and find happiness and what they’re doing. I find the approach to be the same whether working with teenagers, new teachers, and experienced ones alike. But we can’t do it on our own. We need people to sit together to see the problem and to try even the fantastical to find unforeseen possibilities. With all the experience you have as a wise parent, what still lands on you frustrating your ability to stay calm enough to root out the deeper problem?

And the "talented genius" is a harmful idea. It undermines the driven explorative growth and overlooks a core creative capacity in all of us. We all have natural creative capacities and drives. Though, for many they go underdeveloped and often shamed or discouraged away. Schools do not help. The idea of talent does not help. Imaginative and creative capabilities over a life of play, silly thoughts, and explorative problem solving. It does not need to happen through the arts (though they do it well!). Maybe the arts could do more to un-conflate craft, imagination, and expression as the same things rather than different components of creative action. I want to help everyone unlock their imaginative capacity to build their imaginative and creative capabilities. In the arts, art work, in lesson planning, and how we view others and resources. Without turning imaginative capacity into capabilities, innovation is not possible. With it, everyone has a chance of being a talented genius. Oh, and it makes life and parenting a lot more fun! Agree or disagree, please add comments below...