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How to Nurture Creativity in Your Child

As children head back to school this week, here are some ways to tap into their creative nature

The other day, I found my five-year-old covered in washable paint. From head to toe. Black, yellow, iridescent blue… Earlier, I had spread a vinyl tablecloth on the floor and set up her easel with a nice, clean sheet of paper. Although the order-seeking side of me wanted to scold her for painting her body rather than the paper, I bit my tongue and reminded myself: I actually want this.

Creativity scores have slid downward for two solid decades, particularly hitting our elementary school kids the hardest, according to the research of Kyung Hee Kim, an Assistant Professor at the College of William and Mary. This data bothers me because my oldest started kindergarten Monday.

Creativity is the ability to come up with something novel, but also appropriate in its context, and it moves far beyond the paper-maché and piano-improv stereotypes. “Creativity can be applied to any domain,” Dr. James C. Kaufman, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the California State University at San Bernardino and author of Creativity 101, said in a recent interview.

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A competitive skill set for any field includes creativity. A recent New York Times article states that in today’s rapidly changing global marketplace, employers are hiring “people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs every day.” In other words, employers want creative individuals.

So how can I teach my child creativity? “Play is important,” Dr. Kaufman emphasizes. He’s not only a renowned researcher in the field of creativity, but also the dad of a four-year-old. So I asked him how he plays with his own son to nurture creativity. They play Legos, but toss out the instruction booklet, and then they combine sets to see what new things they can invent. They also use the tracks of his son’s train set as landing strips and let it morph into an intergalactic space station. Toys, he reminded me, don’t have to be used for the purpose they were intended. 

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The car is a great place for nurturing creativity. Parents and kids can play the What If? game. What if chickens could talk? What if winter didn’t arrive? Or the Story game, my daughter’s favorite. I might begin by saying, “Once upon a time there was a rabbit with purple spots,” and then we take turns adding to the story until we reach a conclusion (or our destination).

An openness to new experiences correlates with creativity, so Dr. Kaufman suggests mixing things up, even on a small scale. Make pizza instead of picking up an order from Mellow Mushroom. Go to the Dunwoody Nature Center instead of taking your usual weekend trip to Brook Run Park. Let your child paint her body rather than paper (and then run through the sprinkler). Listen to an oldies mix instead of popping in the Kidz Bop CD. Break routine and have fun.

Dr. Robert J. Sternberg, former president of the American Psychological Association and developer of the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, in which creativity is an important prong, offers these eight tips for creating a home environment conducive to creative development:

  1. Encourage children to take sensible risks.
  2. Encourage children to defy the crowd when need be.
  3. Help children realize that creative ideas always encounter obstacles.  Creative people overcome those obstacles.
  4. Help children realize that creative ideas don't sell themselves--you have to learn to sell them.
  5. Look at things in new ways--redefine problems you can't solve to make them ones you can solve.
  6. Appreciate that often children's ideas are better than our own.
  7. Encourage creativity.
  8. Reward children when they are creative.

Let loose, offer choices, and see where your child’s lead takes you. And if you feel overwhelmed be the responsibility, remember Dr. Kaufman’s advice: “If you want your kid to be creative, it’s not like you’ll screw it up.” Whew!

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