In our everyday lives, modern education practices have led so much emphasis on continuous testing and evaluation, that the ingenuity and creativity that used to be seen in children has indeed been stifled. Under the threat of constant direction, control, evaluation and judgment, the children of today are seen working towards classroom goals in an effort to impress the evaluator and fail to come up with new and original ideas.
When a child is in a playful state and free of stress, his emotions are positive in its essence and is open to put ideas and information together in new, creative and useful ways. By contrast, a child that is under stress or in influence of negative emotions has his attention focused on the stimulus that initiated the emotion, thus limiting his creative process and preventing from formulating new ideas and thoughts.
