How We Lose Our Inner Artist — and How Children Can Help Us Find It Again.

Child holding drawing

Every child in the world, no matter where they are born or what background they come from, shares one instinctive language: the language of art.

Before they speak, before they write, before they understand rules or expectations, they draw. Their drawings — from every country, culture, and environment — follow the same patterns: circles, faces, houses, symbols, imaginary creatures. It doesn’t matter if a child lives in a big city, a small village, a wealthy home, or difficult circumstances.

The language is the same.Because it comes from the same place: the right side of the brain — the side of intuition, emotion, imagination, and inner truth.

Art is the first way children express who they are.

The Shift From Expression to Explanation

Then school begins.

Slowly, children are guided away from intuitive expression and toward analytical thinking. Almost every subject — except sports or maybe music — requires the left side of the brain:

• logic

• structure

• clarity

• outcome

• analysis

• correctness

None of these are bad.But when they take over, something important gets lost.

Children start learning how to “do things right” instead of expressing what they feel. They learn how to explain before they learn how to understand themselves. They learn to stay inside the lines — literally and emotionally.

Many children stop drawing. Not because they don’t enjoy it anymore, but because they begin to doubt their own way of expressing.

The Myth of “Talent”

Something interesting happens here:

The children who continue drawing are suddenly called “talented.”

But they are not more gifted than others. They simply never disconnected from their natural artistic language.

They kept using the right side of the brain, while others were pushed so far into the left sidethat they forgot how to express intuitively.

Talent, in many cases, is not a special ability — it is the continuation of what others were taught to abandon.

When Children Lose Their Inner Language

When children stop using intuitive expression, they lose:

• emotional clarity

• creativity

• imagination

• curiosity

• symbolic thinking

• connection to self

They start to ignore their feelings “for the sake of growing up.”And even worse, adults encourage this:“Act your age.” “Don’t be childish.” “Color inside the lines.” “This doesn’t look right.”

Children learn that being emotional, creative, or intuitive is “less important” or “not serious.”

This creates early confusion in identity — a split between who they truly are and who they are expected to be.

When Even Art Becomes a Left-Brain Activity

Even classical drawing schools often make the problem worse:

• perfect proportions

• exact shadows

• realism over imagination

• correction, improvement, repetition

These skills are valuable — but they belong to the left brain.

When we teach children to draw “correctly” too early, we risk killing the right-brain expression that makes art alive.

Why can’t a child make a person blue? Why shouldn’t a tree be purple?Why must a drawing be perfect?

Technical art and intuitive art are two different worlds:

Intuitive Art

• emotional

• symbolic

• free

• unpredictable

• expressive

• chaotic

• meaningful

Academic Art

• analytical

• observational

• measured

• skill-based

• goal-driven

Both are good — but not at the same time. And definitely not as a replacement for each other.

Art Is the Language That Connects Us All

Art is not a skill. It is not a talent. It is not a competition.

Art is the original language of the human mind —a language that all children speak naturally, until someone convinces them that other languages matter more.

If we want to protect this:

• Let children draw without correcting them.

• Don’t ask “What is it?” — ask “Tell me about it.”

• Allow strange colors, wild proportions, unusual ideas.

• Let them enjoy the process, not the result.

• Create environments where creativity is normal — not exceptional.

We don’t need to teach children how to be creative. We only need to avoid teaching them how to stop.

How We Can Protect a Child’s Inner Artist

Protecting this universal language is not about teaching more —it’s about interfering less.

• Observe first.Let children try strange, “not fitting,” surprising ideas. This is how they develop confidence in their intuition.

• Join them — if they want you to. Creating together builds emotional connection. Painting side by side is often more meaningful than talking.

• Notice what happens inside you. When your child paints,do you fear the mess? Do you hear echoes of what your parents once said?Do you feel the urge to guide, correct, or control?

  Just notice it. You don’t need to act.

• Let the process be louder than the result. Children don’t paint to produce something. They paint to understand themselves.

• Don’t lead. Don’t judge. Don’t shape. Your role is presence, not direction.

• Allow freedom of color, form, and idea. A blue tree, a purple fox, a cloud with legs —these are signs of imagination, not mistakes.

• Let your child surprise you.Creativity grows in unpredictability.

• Treat art as a language, not a performance. When children feel understood rather than evaluated, they stay connected to themselves.

We don’t need to teach creativity — we only need to avoid teaching fear.

How We Can Connect With & Protect Our Own Inner Child Artist

Children are not the only ones who lose their artistic language. Many adults carry a quiet grief for the creativity they once had — the one that was replaced by rules, expectations, and “being serious.”

Reconnecting with that part of yourself is not childish.

It is healing.

Here’s how to begin:

• Notice what you loved before you learned to be “correct.” Think of the colors, shapes, ideas, or worlds you created without worrying how they looked.

• Give yourself permission to make “bad art.” Scribbles, messy lines, strange colors — this is not a failure.This is freedom.

• Create without purpose. No goal, no result, no improvement.Just the act of expressing something wordless.

• Watch your inner voice. When you hear “This looks stupid,” or “What’s the point?” — that is not you. That is learned self-judgment.

• Try materials you’ve “outgrown.” Chalk. Finger paint. Watercolors. Paper scraps. These are tools of memory.

• Let curiosity be more important than skill. Skill belongs to the adult. Curiosity belongs to the child.

• Create in small, safe pockets of time. Five minutes. A small doodle. One color. The inner child does not need much to reappear.

• Don’t compare. Don’t correct. Don’t explain. Just feel.

• Make space where your inner world can breathe again. A corner, a notebook, a box of colors, a small ritual — anything that tells your nervous system: “You are allowed to play here.”

We protect our inner artist the same way we protect a child’s:

by allowing freedom, by being gentle with ourselves,and by remembering that art is not a performance — it is a form of being alive.

How Children Help Us Find Our Inner Artist Again

Children remind us of the part of ourselves that existed before rules, expectations, and self-criticism. They reconnect us with:

• play instead of performance

• curiosity instead of fear

• emotion instead of analysis

• imagination instead of correctness

• freedom instead of judgment

Simply watching a child create — without hesitation, without fear, without needing a reason — awakens something familiar inside us. We recognize a version of ourselves that still lives beneath the adult layers.

Children show us:

• that art doesn’t need to “look good”

• that creativity doesn’t need permission

• that expression doesn’t need justification

• that mistakes are part of the experience

• that making something is more important than finishing something

• that joy is found in the process, not the outcome

Their way of creating is a mirror that reflects back our original nature.

When adults paint, draw, or make things alongside children — even for just a moment — the nervous system shifts:

• we relax

• we stop evaluating ourselves

• we follow impulse

• we become present

• we reconnect to the intuitive right side of the brain

In that moment, our inner child artist steps forward again —not because we tried hard, but because we remembered.

Children don’t “teach” us.They remind us who we were before we learned to forget.

Closing Thought

Every child begins life as an artist — free, intuitive, curious, unafraid to express what they feel. And inside every adult, that same artist still exists, often quiet but never gone.

When we protect a child’s creative freedom, we also protect the memory of our own. When we watch children create with honesty and joy, we are reminded of the part of ourselves that once did the same.

Children don’t just need creativity — they show us how to reconnect with ours.

They bring us back to a place where expression is natural, mistakes are allowed, and imagination is more important than perfection.

Art is the first language we learnand the one we lose only when the world teaches us to forget.

Returning to it — through children, through play, through gentleness — is a return to ourselves.