There are many myths about young children based on the definition of creativity as an innate capacity for openness to experience. This definition of creativity as a personality trait or attitude (creativity as expressiveness) has little relationship to creativity as the making of original and socially valuable products. Studies of children's art show the young child unable to transform raw materials from expressive gesture into final product. Children instinctively conceptualize and abstract but do not work with conscious purpose and intent, which is a mark of true creativity. The reported drop in creativity at age eight or nine is actually just a change in the quality of expressiveness; feeling becomes subservient to manipulation of form, to articulation of realistic detail, to concepts of appropriate match. A longitudinal study of 27 children from grade one through grade six found that creativity becomes more crystallized with age so that after age ten there is reasonable stability in the expression of it. (TS)