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.

Any relationship strengthens as you go on spending more and more time together by listening and understanding each other and by sharing your thoughts. The bond between parent and child is no exception to it. As you go on spending more time with your kid by giving him dedicated and focused attention, your bond with child goes on strengthening.

 

 Research has shown that both the quality and quantity of time parents spend with their children are important. But more than quantity, quality matters. Even working parents can share more quality time with kids as compared to parents staying at home. The obvious reason is that, parents staying at home think that they are compensating for quality by quantity. Being at home while you are doing household work and the child is playing or watching TV then you are not giving dedicated attention to your kid. Quality time is when you actually start talking to your kid, you come to know about his heart felt emotions, his excitements, his sorrows, etc. and it can be pleasant for both of you.

 

 So in a broader aspect, if you think about both working and stay-home parents, all of them face the same problem in spending dedicated time with their kids. To avoid this, both working and stay-home parents need to give some thought for planning out this time. If you really want to share the quality time and a careful planning is done for the activities with kids then this purpose can surely be served.  Your love for your child along with some creative imagination can help you achieve this goal. By spending a good time with your child will definitely teach your child the fundamental lesson of being able to create happiness in any situation and this lesson will surely help him enjoy every moment throughout his life.

  

“The work will wait while you show your child the rainbow, but the rainbow won’t wait while you do the work.” -Patricia Clafford

 

I remember a day when I was returning home from work, it was raining. I saw a beautiful shining rainbow between the hills and over the clouds. It was mesmerizing.  I just wanted my son to see the rainbow. After reaching home, immediately I called him. I closed his eyes with my hands and took him outside. We stood facing the rainbow and slowly I took my hands off. He was very astonished. I still remember the look on his face, it was beautiful. Such a nice experience to see a smile on kid’s face!

 

 Now let me tell you the activities that can really turn the scattered moments you spend with your child to the sparkling crackers in the dark sky of your busy day. Here we go….

 

After bedtime: In morning or after a nap, when kids come out of bed, they are in different state of mind. Every time the state may differ. Sometimes they might be happy, sometimes sad, sometimes frightened. But the part that is common is they need your attention at that time. Just a hug for some time or a loving touch can turn them ON. Mornings can be the toughest time for working parents, but just take out 5 minutes and share some moments with your kid. It will really count!

 

Driving to daycare/school: This is the best opportunity to make a bond with your kid. You are through with the tough time in the morning to get ready and help your child getting ready. Now while you drive your kid to school or day care, there are few things, which can help you to have really good time together.  There are so many things around – at the roadside, in the sky, on the trees. Just make a game out of it. I just mark few landmarks with my child and everyday we talk about the changes or similarity in situation at that place. For example, we always see same kind of birds at the similar places. Everyday we just go on counting the birds as I drive for my kid to school.

 

After coming back from work: Take out some initial time for your child after coming home from work. Dedicate at least 5 minutes to your kid immediately after you reach home. It is really be difficult to be with your child immediately after you are back. But just a hug or a loving touch conveys a lot of things than words.

 

While preparing meals: Take help from kids while you prepare meal. Let the kids help you out in getting things out from fridge, getting necessary utensils for you and whatever things you can ask for them to do. As long as you make them feel important or even helpful, you are giving your child quality time.

For toddlers you can give some utensils with water and soap solution. This was the usual tactics I used to use when my son was a toddler. He used to try to imitate me the way I cook.

 

Let household work be a happy time: You can also take help from children when you do cleaning, gardening or any other household work. Let them feel being helpful and also take suggestions from them wherever possible. This exercise might just take some extra time to complete the task, but it is worth to share happy moments with your kid.

 

Before Bedtime: Give some time to listen to your kid. This is the time when your bond with your child can strengthen. During this time, let your kid explain about his day. Let him narrate it at his own pace. Having an interactive audience is such an encouraging moment for the child! Don’t laugh or put down the child for doing anything stupid. Encourage him for good things he did and help him come to a point to decide how he could have handled difficult situations in better manner. Have patience doing this.

 

Make Grocery shopping a cheerful task: Going for grocery shopping with children is always a difficult task altogether. But if you can give a little more time to it, you can make this work a cheerful one. Just ask your kid to help you out choosing appropriate things you need. When your child will feel being important and useful, he is certainly going to enjoy the time with you doing the shopping.

 

Plan your weekend to have some child-centered activities:  Everyday kids need some good time with their parents. It’s difficult for the working parents to give much time to their children on weekdays. Then why not utilize weekends in better way?

Plan you weekend in a better manner that will provide some dedicated time solely for your kid. This can be done by doing an indoor activity or by taking your kid for an outing.

 

Remember that it’s your imagination which can make your daily tedious jobs to cheerful and playful events and you also can spend some quality time with your kid. When you grow trying to be a good parent, you grow as a human being too.

 

 

 

Childhood is an amazingly beautiful time in life. Childhood is such a time, which never comes back, but after growing up everybody wishes to go back to the early days. But everybody’s early days are difficult days for his or her parents to manage. Isn’t it?

In early days of a child, parents have to make sure that they give a sound foundation to child’s character and good ethics. As child is born, he is just like a clean paper. Whatever you write on it, child will have that as foundation for his further life.

Discipline is an integral part of an effort to shape up child’s life. But discipline is usually misunderstood as a method of correction or punishment. Discipline cannot be a negative reaction rather should be positive, motivating action.

 Dictionary defines discipline as a ‘training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement’. Discipline is an ongoing training activity. This training should give children a guideline to help them in reacting to situations in day-to-day activities. Discipline helps in developing an organised life pattern in children.

But how to induce discipline in your child’s life?

Here we will discuss how to design this training for your child. These are the guidelines for parents and how parents can effectively induce discipline in child.

 The formula for training is ECLIPSE. The way sun comes out glowing after the eclipse, parents can take up this formula and can get marvellous results in setting up the discipline.

Establish clear limits and boundaries for children. When we decide on clear rules then kids come to know the boundary and then are more likely to abide to the limits. But the rules need to be very clear and very specific. If kids have been just told the general expectations, they can’t figure out what they are expected to do. But if a specific limit has been set then children can know exactly what are they supposed to do. For example, when you want the child to be back at home early after evening play, then tell him, ‘Be back by 6.30 pm’. Just an instruction such as ‘Be back early in evening’ won’t be easy for children to adhere to.

 Cue kids once while giving directions. Make it sure that the kid is listening to your instructions; otherwise chances are there that you will be overlooked by the child. Taking into account child’s opinion also can be a way to make sure that the child is in sync with you. When you want cooperation, first gain children’s attention, state what you want and give them some time to carry out your instructions. 

 Look into child’s eye while talking to the child and giving any directions. Be firm on your instructions. Let the child know very clearly that his behavior is not acceptable and stay firm while telling this. Stay away from yelling or putting down by words; just speak firmly and very directly.

 Immediate action should be taken when kids break rules or refuse to cooperate. Nagging or constantly reminding children to do the right thing doesn’t help much in making children understand the rules, rather implement a consequence that is related to the misbehavior. The consequence need not be a physical punishment. The best methods to be used as punishment are time-out and rewarding good behavior.

 Pinpoint the purpose why child might be misbehaving.  There are reasons for child’s misbehavior that might not be very difficult to identify if you look keenly. Identify what child gain from behaving in certain ways. Unusual or out of character misbehavior should be cautiously observed and can be a sign that child is experiencing difficulties in some area. To identify which type of behavior your child is exhibiting and how to handle it, check out 4 different behavior patterns to understand your child better

 Self-control is essential for parents to get discipline in their child’s life. Children usually follow whatever they see and their role models are their parents. So while handling kids’ misbehavior, they to understand the purpose of the misbehavior. Take out some time to think about the possible reasons for the misbehavior and possible ways you can react to child’s action. This way you can train yourself to respond appropriately to your child’s misbehavior at first instance and you can stop further misbehavior. Train yourself to stop, think and go against your natural instinct when children misbehave and look for more positive or creative approaches.

 Encourage kids at every possible opportunity. Corrective discipline needs to be balanced by liberal amounts of encouragement. The persistent encouragement helps in developing self-confidence in children and raising their self-worth.

 Children need their parents to induce constant rules and be firm about them. Consistency rather than severity is the key to effective discipline. While no parent enjoys restricting their child by discipline, it is a necessity of raising children.  Inducing discipline is the way by which parents can lay a solid foundation for children.

 

 

God has blessed us with his cutest creation – an adorable child. The children are like sweet, beautiful flowers. Just look at them and you will be refreshed. But like flowers, they need good nurturing, good care and a lot of attention. Missing on one small thing (as it might seem to be) can deteriorate their beauty and smile.

 

Well, that’s the reason why parenting is like a rope walk. You have to be alert all the time and in all situations. There are number of situations to handle. How you react to each of the situation decide how child is being raised.

 

Every child is born special. So how you should react to each situation they incur, also need to be dealt with differently. The relationship of a parent with a child evolves by means of parent’s reaction and response to child’s behavior and vice versa.

 

But when it comes to child’s misbehavior, the obvious question coming in mind is – why does child behave like that?

 

Here we are going to discuss about those reasons.

The misbehavior of a child is his reaction to the surrounding situation. The surrounding situation comprises of parents’ behavior, other adults’ behavior, behavior of other children. There can be many facets to child’s response and reaction to the surrounding situation. As I said, each child is different, so are their reactions. Isn’t it?

 

To find out the reason for the misbehavior, we need to take into account many things specific to the child. We will try to discuss as many as possible.

 

When we start analyzing the misbehavior of child, there are obvious questions coming into our mind about child’s misbehavior. Does the child misbehave intentionally? Or he has no clue that he is misbehaving?

 

Well, these are again very complex questions to answer. Many times the misbehavior is inexperienced and impulsive reaction of the child in that situation. So we can’t actually say that the child might have misbehaved intentionally. As the children are not experienced enough to handle the unpleasant situations, they are quite unsure about the reaction to be given. Unpleasant situations are difficult for adults to handle then for children the situations are not easy to handle with the experience they have in life.

 

Here comes the necessity of discipline in children. By discipline, I don’t mean a strict rules being defined for each and every action taken by the child. Rather discipline is to raise a child in such a way that the child can handle any situation with confidence and take responsibility of his actions. And being able to induce this ability in child, parents have to take care of several things. This requires a good degree of firmness and a willingness to treat children with respect, even if they don’t always respond to us in same way.

Each child needs to feel he or she is an important and useful member of the family unit. Because this desire for significance is so important, children work to achieve this goal through either negative or positive means.

 

The negative means of achieving the goal is misbehavior. And there are so many situations in which kids behave using these negative means. If we just try to classify these behaviors then these can be divided in 4 types.

 

‘Attention please’ behavior: When the child is depriving of attention and cannot convey it properly, this type of behavior is often seen. Interrupting, whining, giving problems while eating are few of the ways in which kids try to achieve attention. Clowning, cuteness, shyness and showing-off also come in this type of behavior.

 

‘Help me out’ behavior: The child is not able to take care of his tasks then this type of behavior can be used to communicate. The child will like to get help from parents for the shear purpose to grab attention. Incompetence, forgetfulness, laziness and untidiness are the usual behavior patterns in this case.

 

Both types of behaviors are attention grabbing behaviors. While dealing with these kinds of behaviors, parents can usually get frustrated and annoyed. And then parents can react by scolding, reminding, correcting or doing tasks for kids. These are not the positive kind of attention but still can satisfy kids’ desire for parents’ attention. But if you are trying to work on the misbehavior of the kid and want to minimize the misbehavior, then these are not the ways.

To handle these attention-seeking behaviors in better way, you can give a little bit of time before you react, try not to react impulsively. Stop, think and then respond to the situation arrived in front of you.

 

‘Give me power’ behavior: The goal of this behavior is to gain power and control. When child sees that he does not have any control over his surrounding and cannot express this then he tries different means to control the situation and drive it according to him.

 

When you see kids are using means like defiance, arguing, dawdling, temper tantrums and stubbornness, then they are seeking for power.

 

Now if we try to think about the way to handle this, we will have to think how we can satisfy the need of the child to have some control over the situation. Just try to give the child some power and control by giving choice in the situation. You just can ask for their opinion and choice in day to day activities. This way child will have some power as well as confidence to take decisions. But then parents need to define the limit. By the time you put forward some choices in front of the child, you get time to handle the situation well.

 

‘I’ll harm you’ behavior: This behavior is usually sending the message that the child is going to hurt you. Refusal to cooperate, hit, stealing and saying hurtful things are the behavior usually seen to be revengeful behavior of this kind.

 

Kids need to be noticed if they are disturbed. But just letting them do whatever they are doing is not going to help.

 

What might be the best way to deal with this situation is to take out the negativity from the action and just try making a play out of it. Instead of feeling offended by child’s behavior, give him some other means by which his energy can be used in positive way. If this works fine for your child, then GREAT. The negative feelings will go off and you will have a cheerful child in front of you.

 

Every child can show all these kind of behavior at one point of time and it is important how parents handle the situation. If a child is repeating the same kind of misbehavior then there is something wrong how you are responding to the situation. Try something different. Even keeping mum for sometime can help in few situations. You know your child best, so try something new and try yourself cool. This will definitely help!