When you create, it means you’re processing reality through your imaginative ideas. You’re essentially looking at the world from your own perspective and joining existing dots that would otherwise remain separate. Fostering creativity for kids opens up innovative perspectives only their minds see. Knowing how to encourage creativity in a child will benefit their growth and learning.
Is Your Child Creative?
You might hope your child has a creative side. Don’t stress about it. Every kid enters the world with a capacity for innovative thinking and action, and with the support, encouragement and freedom to explore their creativity, it will blossom as they grow older. It’s part of your parental responsibility to foster and nurture this creativity so it reaches its full potential.
Creativity for kids can be fostered. There are several ways I’ve tried to encourage creative growth through simple actions.
Provide a Space for Their Creative Activities
Designate a room or area within your home where your kid’s creativity can flow unabated, then provide the tools to encourage it. Think about including some of the following creative ideas for kids:
- Lego bricks for creative design
- Crayons and paper for artistic creativity
- A padded coffee tin and chopsticks for musical expression
- Old clothes for dressing up
- Fluffy toys for communicative creativity
Once you’ve fully stocked this room, introduce your child to it in a way that makes them sense your excitement.
Demonstrate Play Routines
Leaving your young child in the room to determine what to do with its contents is akin to telling a teenager to change a car’s differential oil without knowing the necessary steps it entails. Although more resourceful and naturally creative kids would likely figure out what to do in time, it’s better to help them early on through demonstration and examples.
Your involvement also displays interest, which helps strengthen your bond and portrays love and acceptance at an early age — vital ingredients in an ongoing relationship between parents and children. Remember that your child will naturally gravitate toward certain activities. I’ve noticed an artistic flair in my boy. As kids’ creativity blossoms, pay attention to their interests and introduce similar, more advanced challenges.
Encourage Their Creative Growth
You may notice your kid is not interested in building with blocks or Legos but loves the formative drum kit and dressing up. In this case, consider including different music playlists and children’s videos during playtime. Play some coffee tin drums, but do so to the beat of some music, and add a toy guitar or keyboard to the room. Tell stories and encourage your child to act out a role in them or dance to the music you include.
As your youngster’s creative path becomes more apparent, slowly start removing items in the room that appear to hold no interest. You can always reintroduce these items if their disappearance draws a response.
Control Your Personal Biases
Ideally, you’d love your child to grow up with interests similar to yours, as every parent dreams of bonding with their teenager while working on a car or attending a ballgame. Sadly, life and creativity don’t always work as you’d like. For your child’s sake and your future relationship, it’s essential to recognize this and encourage them to follow their creative path. No matter how you try, you’ll never change your kid’s interests to suit you.
Ask Them Questions
Asking your youngster questions about their newly found passion prompts reflection. Perhaps you will relate to the answers and learn from them yourself. Asking questions that encourage in-depth answers rather than one-word responses displays your genuine interest and prompts more thought on their part.
- How did you think of that?
- What inspired you?
- What do you want to gain from it?
- Did you surprise yourself in any way?
- What did you find most demanding?
- What have you learned?
- Is it as good as you wanted?
- Is there anything you could do differently?
- What do you have planned next?
Questions like these motivate your child to think differently about their creative endeavors and incorporate more progressive ideas into future projects.
Support Their Creative Learning Path
Supporting and nurturing your child’s creativity is easier if you share common interests, but you can still assist in many ways if you don’t. Remember, you’re never too old to learn, and a parent often develops interests that correspond with their kid’s creativity later in life. Whatever the case, offer guidance by sharing how your own creative processes work and encouraging their ideas and strategies. Your child could learn a lot from your past experiences.
Your support will grow your kid’s confidence in following their creative process and allay fears that threaten to sidetrack them. Think about how learning something new caused you anxiety. Consider how challenging your child’s attempts to learn to play the guitar would be without encouragement. Will they ever improve? What will people think? Your support will encourage their growth and perseverance to get better. I’m really looking forward to helping my son learn to play an instrument.
Enroll Them in the Best School
Your support and encouragement will encourage your child to embrace their creative talents, and when it’s time, a progressive school will develop their passions and creativity even further. It will balance their academic needs with the growth of their character and confidence through sports, arts, or technical activities. When parents and schools pay attention to how children learn best, it encourages them to develop new interests and strengths as they progress.
As they mature and move into higher education, your kids will form an idea of the path they see their future taking. Creativity takes many forms. Lawyers and journalists excel in communication, while electricians and motor mechanics have distinct practical skills. Musicians, actors and artists use gifts in various ways. The trick is to find the most appropriate school to harness your child’s unique creative talent so they’ll achieve great things.
Your Greatest Gift to Your Child: Your Support
Your parental responsibility never ceases, from showing your child their creativity room for the first time until you wave them off to college, art school, college or the NBA. The greatest motivators they’ll have in accomplishing their creative dreams and goals are their parents, and if you are beside them on their journey from the crib to adulthood, they’ll never forget it.
I enjoy taking time to foster my kids’ creativity, and you will, too. Before you know it, your parenting work will be over, and you can look on with pride at what they become in adulthood.