Quick thought on improv with my nephews
by moppezzo
Cat’s post was totally what I was thinking about this weekend. I babysat my nephews, and managed to iphone-video-capture 4 minutes of my 3-year old nephew improv-ing about monsters, and I was struck by the incredible creativity and originality he had (though I’m not sure my research on creativity would allow it to be called that!) I don’t think many adults could generate these different ideas. On the other hand, my older nephew, Chase, was doing a lot of rejecting my bids while playing. None of my ideas were taken up. When playing secret spies, (which is basically a make-it-up-as-you-go as-long-as-there-is-some-air-of-stealth running around), I offered that “now it’s time to go find the treasure!” He replied “no, no, no, cuz NOW it’s time for us to go OUTSIDE and make a plan.” (What the plan was for and what making the plan was never were discovered, we ended up doing something else outside). When I suggested during our plan making that we go rescue the captured Foo Foo, (a partially-ripped, partially stuffed, quite-loved bunny), Chase said “no, no, cuz now FooFoo’s been gone too long. Let’s pretend that now he’s on the bad guy team and we can’t go get him anymore.” I kept suggesting new things so the game wasn’t so reactive on my part, but he would constantly block my additions to the game, either because he wanted control of the game, or because he couldn’t think enough on his feet to go with my contributions (PS, he’s 6). I don’t know what my observation means– is this developmental, contextual, or just specific to these two kids and I can’t generalize from it? All I know is, A. it wasgreat to witness pure imagination in a 3 year old. and B. I super love my 6 year old nephew just as much and delighted playing with him, but it’s truly bumming to have all of your contributions shot down while in an improv scene!
educ95si 
Phenomenal.
This is a gem. A gem of a question. What drives us, as we get older to exercise more and more control? Its a clearly visible switch that flips around the ages of 2-3 yrs. And then, we must be schooled to learn that “Everything can’t be our way.” We learn to “work with people.”
And yes, its awful to have your stuff shot down continually (even when dealing with an object of great affection like your nephew). This is one of the things that improv hopes to radically change. An improviser always strives (at least a good improviser) to accept every idea coming there way. And is generous about sharing there own idea whether they think its a “good” one or not. Much like toddlers. They will come up with some really crappy stuff but they’re delighted about presenting it to you. A seemingly simple quality but extremely hard to imitate, let alone to inculcate by adults.