The small corrections that close a door quietly.

Nobody sets out to stop a child drawing. It is done in single sentences, kindly meant.

The damage is rarely dramatic. It is a hand reaching over to straighten a line. It is the observation that the sky does not really go all the way down to the ground. It is the helpful note that people have necks, or that the house needs a door, or that horses are not usually purple. It is the adult taking a corner of the sheet and demonstrating an ear, once, quickly, so the child can see. Every one of these is offered as assistance and every one of them delivers the same information: there is a correct version of this and it is not yours.

Children respond to that information rationally. If there is a right answer and an adult has it, the efficient move is to obtain the right answer rather than to keep guessing. So they start asking you to draw it. Then they start copying, then they start apologising for their own attempts, then they stop starting. The whole sequence can run in a few months and it is nearly always reversible early and very difficult later. The most useful thing an adult can do is simply to notice the urge to fix, feel it, and not act on it.

This does not mean an adult must be silent or that a child can never be shown anything. If a child asks directly how to make a colour go darker, tell them, because that is a question about material and it has an answer. The line to hold is between technique that is requested and content that is imposed. Show what a tool does, when asked. Do not decide what the picture ought to contain, do not touch the sheet without an invitation, and do not rescue a drawing that you have privately judged to be going wrong. It is not going wrong. It is going somewhere you did not predict.