But people who discourage you, and you never forget that. And it can really derail a kid, you know? I remember any comment a teacher made like that. To this day you remember it. You know who’s great with that? Dav Pilkey, who does Captain Underpants. I’ve done a lot of signings with him.
Dav is — if a kid comes up to him — so Dav had every malady known to people as a kid, ADD, all the diagnoses, that was him. So kids come up to him saying I’ve been diagnosed with that too and Dav takes so much time with that kid to tell him you’re great, keep doing what you’re doing, draw, don’t listen to them. He really takes time. It slows the signing line down tremendously, but it’s great and that kid leaves feeling really great, you know?
You got to be really positive with those kids. You really have to — to me, they’ve got to leave the room thinking they can be anything they want to be because if you do anything to discourage that, who knows who you’re pushing out the room that one day might have been something great. You know, because you remember those comments. You remember any teacher who did that to you and you also remember any who really praised you.
So give them a chance to draw, give them a chance to create, give them the freedom to do it the way they want to do it I mean within some structure, I suppose. And talk to them when they’ve completed it as you would to an adult. I don’t know why we don’t do that. It’s really a strange thing. They’re way more brilliant than we give them credit for. Their instincts on people are as on as yours, if not more on and they’ll say it.