Creativity and imagination are premium qualities that all parents want their children to have. Creative people are backbone of the society. They can solve business problems, create scientific advances, write books and songs and become leaders in many areas. They are the architects of culture and therefore are highly prized.
As a parent, nurturing your child’s creative abilities involves a bit of a paradox. You need to let go a little, to back off and leave artistic and inventive decisions up to her. However, you can trigger imagination by asking thought-provoking questions concerning the whys, hows, and whats of objects and situations. It’s very important that you be available to provide reassurance when creative ventures don’t go right and praise for trying as well as finishing. When it comes to a child’s education, interaction is really a key.
If we try to understand about creativity centres in brain then technically speaking new synapses should be created in young brains as far as possible. Synapses are the connections between brain cells. We have billions of these necessary connections in our brains. Young people need to form synapses and then use these connections repeatedly to strengthen them as they grow and mature. It is important to make, as many strong synapses as possible while humans are young. Starting around age 11, some brain cells begin to die and disappear. This is a natural process necessary to prune myriad weak connections that youngsters have formed. It also institutes order in the young brain.
The closer we come to nurturing that creativity in a child’s early life, the greater the chance they’ll one day grow up into flourishing happy adults. The minute a child reaches the age where they are pushed into the world of public education, they are suddenly burdened with the pressure to succeed.
Instinctively, parents and teachers alike turn their main focus on their children getting high grades rather than succeeding as a human being.
Of course, curriculum is very important. But curriculum is not important enough to bear tremendous pressure on our impressionable children. Especially when the high cost affects the goal of truly happy, well-rounded kids. Parents would never purposely force harmful behaviours upon their children, but sometimes unknowingly do. This way parents themselves just demotivate child from using their potential, which might not always be shown during curriculum.
Here are some tips to help you know how to increase creativity in your child.
Tips to increase creativity and imagination in your child
Encourage Them To Question
Curiosities are major step towards creativity. Children are curious and they ask many questions, with some capable of even baffling you. Make sure never to curb this habit. Rather, encourage them to ask questions and try to feed their curiosity as much as possible. But, do make sure that you don’t get political or dead serious in answering the questions. Provide open-ended answers and always be game with them. If you don’t know the answer, instead of directly saying no, tell them that it was a wonderful question and both of you should search for its answer.
Spend Time With Them
The modern life does not give people much time to spend with their children. So, you should try to make do with what little time you have. While your children are small, try to concentrate on them more than your career. You can even request your organization to give a schedule that allows you to spend more time with your children. The more time you spend with them, the more you will able to kindle their curiosity and creativity.
Play With Them
Play with your children like a child and not like an adult. Playing with them will help you bond with them. Persuade your spouse to be a part of the game as well. Incorporate creative games and imaginary plays in the time spent with your kids. Sing and dance with them and you will find your children more creative in few years. According to a recent research, those children whose parents spent more time with them became more creative.
Talk To Them
Talking to your children is very important to maintain a good rapport and communication with them. Although most people do talk to their children, it is generally in the form of instructions, rather than a conversation. Talk to kids like an adult, listen to what she has to say and give her advice if she wants it, but don’t impose anything on the kid.
Give Coloring Books & Toys
Give your kids toys that can be transformed into different shapes, like a colorful clay toy, and introduce them to color books from their childhood. It’s not necessary that they learn to be a painter. It’s just to develop their imagination and thus, enhance their creativity.
Preschool-aged children are much more interested in the process than they are in the final outcome. Children are incredibly creative, so open-ended toys and games that can foster that creativity are always great ideas. Avoid toys that are so specific that after playing with them a few times, the child becomes bored.
Wooden blocks, dress-up items, balls, train sets and tree swings allow children to come up with their own play scenarios and can allow them to learn more freely than with toys that aim for a specific outcome like many computer games.
Give Them Decision Power
Make kids the master, at times. We always want to decide for our children, as we believe that we know the best for them. However, we cannot decide for them all our life, can we? So it is better that you cultivate the habit of making decisions in your kids right from childhood, to make them self-dependent and creative. You can take their opinion and decision in small things. Although the absolute power should be with you, let them give a vote on what they want. If it’s reasonable, comply with it.
Provide Encounter With Nature
Take your kids for morning or evening walks. Involve them in gardening with you and make them learn about different plants. Encourage them to help the stray animals and take them to zoos and parks on a regular basis. Plan your weekend this way that you will be able to take your child to interact with nature. All this will help your child learn how to appreciate and love nature. And nature is the origin of all the creativity. Nature demonstrates the variety of creations by god. Wheyour child will start appreciating the nature and god’s creations, she will certainly tend to become more imaginative.
Read To Them
When you read to your children, they start imagining the story. The more you read to them, the more creative they would become. Reading aloud to children creates new synapses and reinforces old ones. The time-spent reading to your children will inevitably increase their creativity and imagination by allowing them to create a ‘œmental movie’ of what they hear.
Emphasize Process Rather Than Product
Encourage kids to make their own projects for school and don’t emphasize on making it perfectly. The most important thing is that your child learns to work on his/her own and uses creativity. A perfectly finished project is not necessary for that. Praise your kids if they make something by themselves, even if it is not that great and always encourage them to think creatively.
Art Projects
Art supplies are fun to buy, and you may be surprised at the number of them even a baby can handle and enjoy. Before the age of one, a child loves to scribble on a big piece of paper with a fat graphite pencil. She can move up soon to colored pencils, jumbo crayons, chalk, and, by age two, water-based felt-tip pens.
When your child is ready to paint, probably at about two years of age, think first of protection — one of your old shirts to cover the child and newspaper sheets or a special mat to cover the floor. A two year old can help you make finger paint. From the age of two, your child loves to pound, roll, and flatten whatever kind of clay you supply as her sense of touch develops. The most practical first clay is a plasticized variety you can buy at the store or a flour or baking soda and cornstarch clay you make yourself .
Make-believe play
You’ll see your child’s first attempts at make-believe before he can walk, when the two of you play peek-a-boo with a handkerchief. At six months, your baby pretends to groom his head, bald or not, with a hairbrush. Your child will amaze you with his inventiveness finding props — a receiving blanket becomes a swirling cape for dancing or a knapsack for carrying supplies to a hiding place blocked off with a pile of books under the dining room table. You can contribute props, too, including such castoffs as hats and shoes and other clothes, costume jewelry, and a briefcase or small suitcase. You’ll learn not to discard big cardboard boxes, the cores from rolls of toilet tissue or paper towels, the plastic containers strawberries come in, or almost anything else that is clean and intact.
Sometimes your child brings his dolls, stuffed animals, and puppets into imaginative play. Long conversations may take place as your child reenacts interesting or worrisome situations. You are also likely to see and hear versions of punishments and scoldings you recognize as originating with you. Go on encouraging your child for make-believe play. That way she will learn to wear her imaginative wings and fly in the sky of creativity.
These are the ways you can take up so that you can bring up a creative and imaginative child. Every child is creative and imaginative. But how you nurture this potential in child is important in making a creative adult.