"Children are far more interesting to work with than grownups. They're incredibly honest. They'll tell you exactly what they think"

Working with children exposes an unvarnished human truth: they mirror what they perceive without pretense. Their reactions are immediate, visceral, and largely unmediated by the social calculations adults learn to perform. When something bores them, they drift. When something delights them, they erupt into laughter or questions. That candor is both a diagnostic tool and a creative catalyst. It compresses the feedback loop between intention and effect, giving anyone who teaches, designs, performs, or leads the clearest signal of what is actually landing.

Adults, by contrast, often cloak their responses in politeness, fear of judgment, or habit. They have learned to massage the message, to nod while disengaged, to prioritize harmony over truth. Collaborating with them can become an intricate dance around ego and expectation. Children don’t usually choreograph their responses; they bring play, curiosity, and a bracing refusal to pretend. Their honesty isn’t cruel so much as earnest, sincere, uncomplicated, sometimes blunt. That bluntness can sting, but it also points straight to the heart of a problem or the spark of possibility.

There is also a creative energy in the way children approach the world. They ask why, then why again, until the foundations of an idea are revealed. They are less invested in defending prior assumptions and more open to exploring the odd or improbable. Work shaped in their company tends to be clearer, warmer, and more alive, because it must contend with attention, meaning, and joy in real time.

Of course, children’s honesty is not the same as accuracy. They speak from a limited but vivid perspective, and adults bear responsibility for interpreting, guiding, and protecting. Yet that very limitation is instructive: if an idea can survive their scrutiny, if it can hold a child’s interest, provoke their questions, earn their laughter, then it likely contains something sturdy and human. Engaging with such honesty invites humility, sharpens craft, and restores a sense of play that many grownups forget they need.