When play and art are treated as optional, they become the first tools of punishment—and Black children are the ones most often punished away from their own humanity.

Adultification can impact children’s freedom to create.

Play and art are framed as privileges, not rights.

In many school systems, play and creative expression are categorized as extra—not essential to learning, regulation, or healing. That framing makes them the easiest things to remove when punishment is needed.

A Black mother’s frustration—often rooted in advocacy, fear, or exhaustion—is frequently misread as hostility or noncompliance. The system then responds not by supporting the child, but by tightening control around them.

Instead of addressing bias, miscommunication, or unmet needs, the system resolves adult tension by removing the child from:

• → recess
• → art
• → music
• → movement
• → free play

These removals are framed as “discipline,” but they function as deprivation.

We believe children are whole people, not projects.

We believe creativity is not decoration—it is communication. When children create, they are speaking in the language available to them. Their marks, colors, repetition, silence, and erasures carry meaning even when words are not yet safe or possible.

We believe harm occurs when adults dismiss, correct, ridicule, or erase children's creative expression. Whether intentional or not, these actions teach children that their inner world is unsafe to share.

We believe children living with chronic illness, disability, or medical surveillance are especially vulnerable to having their creative expressions misunderstood, minimized, or medicalized. Their art is often treated as “coping” rather than testimony. This silencing allows deeper trauma to remain hidden.

We believe creativity thrives in consent, curiosity, and care—not control.

We believe adults have a responsibility to examine how power, fear, patriarchy, racism, ableism, and spiritual shame shape their responses to children’s creativity. We commit to unlearning practices that prioritize neatness, obedience, productivity, or comfort over truth.

We believe restorative justice offers a path forward. When creative harm occurs, the goal is not punishment, but acknowledgment, repair, and remembrance. Children deserve to be witnessed, believed, and restored.

We believe creativity carries ancestral memory. When children create, they are often drawing from lineages of survival, stewardship, and sacred knowing. Protecting children’s creativity is an act of legacy care.

We believe remembering erased art is a form of justice.

We believe that when we honor children's creative voices, we do more than protect individual children—we interrupt cycles of silencing that harm families, communities, and generations.