Mess and Creative Genius

"In the early 1950's, in a kitchen a mother stands opening cans and emptying the contents into a pressure cooker.  Her son, a Boy scout, wants to get a merit badge in film-making.  His father had bought him a super-8 movie camera.  Then the child got the inspiration to make a horrow movie.  For one shot he needs red, bloody-looking goop to ooze from kitchen cabinets.  So his mother buys thirty cans of cherries and dumps the cherries into the pressure cooker, rendering a delightful oozy red goop.
     His mother is not the type who says "Go outside and play.  I don't want that stuff in the house."  She is more than obliging and gives him free rein of the house, letting him convert it into his film studio - moving furniture around, putting backdrops over things.  She helps him make costumes and even acts in his films.  When he wants a desert scene, she drives him out to the desert in their jeep.
     The goopy bloody kitchen scene, she recalled much later, left her picking cherries out of the cupboard for years.  Her son's name?  Steven Spielberg."
     What if Steven's mother never let him mess up the house?  What if she hadn't let him use her things as props or didn't take him to locations for shooting his movies?  Would Steven Spielberg have become one of the world's most famous filmmakers?  While you hopefully don't have to put cherries into a pressure cooker, what hidden talents and passions does your child have that are just waiting for your support and encouragement?  Find out.

Copied from: Finding Your Child's Special Genius, Homeschooling for Success, by R.Kochenderfer and E.Kanna, (Warner Books, 2002), Steven's story quoted form The Creative Spirit, by D.Goleman, P.Kaufman, and M. Ray (Penguin Group, 1992)