Nurturing Your Child's Creativity

Nurturing Your Child's Creativity by Dr. Laura Markham

Nurturing Your Child's Creativity

“Preempt the time spent on television and organized activities and have them spend it instead on claiming their imaginations. For in the end, that is all we have. If a thing cannot be imagined first -- a cake, a relationship, a cure for AIDS -- it cannot be. Life is bound by what we can envision.

I cannot plant imagination into my children. I can, however, provide an environment where their creativity is not just another mess to clean up but welcome evidence of grappling successfully with boredom. It is possible for boredom to deliver us to our best selves, the ones that long for risk and illumination and unspeakable beauty.
If we sit still long enough, we may hear the call behind boredom. With practice, we may have the imagination to rise up from the emptiness and answer.”
-- Nancy H. Blakey
Creativity might be defined as putting things together in novel ways, or seeing the world, or a given problem, with fresh eyes. All of us need access to creativity to solve the problems of daily life, and I believe that everyone is creative, although some people are born with talent in certain mediums: an artist’s eye, for instance, or perfect pitch, or a writer’s way with words.
We can’t give people talent, but we can train the eye and the ear and the mind, and we can help our children gain access to a creative way of seeing. We can also help them gain the concentration, competence, perseverance, and optimism necessary to succeed in creative pursuits.
Recent studies examining creativity have surprised researchers. The researchers began with the assumption that the kids recommended by their art teachers as most creative would be the “artist types” -- offbeat, disorganized kids who performed more poorly in other classes at school. They were wrong.
High School art teachers named as most creative the same kids who excelled at getting their work done in other classes. These kids exhibited concentration during demonstrations of technique, the competence to plan their projects, the optimism to take the risk of a more difficult or original idea, and the perseverance to put in the extra time required to do a thorough job completing the project. While this does not speak to talent, it highlights the point that putting creativity to use in the world requires the same qualities of competence addressed elsewhere on this site. It also implies that the same parenting that helps kids become emotionally healthy encourages creativity.

"The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist." -- Ananda Coomaraswamy

So how do you help your child develop his creativity?
Read the rest of the article entire on this link: http://www.ahaparenting.com/parenting-tools/raise-great-kids/intellegent-creative-child/child-creativity