If you are keen on creativity and innovation, you surely
want your children to be creative as well. If so, the sooner you act,
the better. Research is demonstrating that children rapidly lose their
creative thinking skills as they grow older. Moreover, by the time a
child reaches adolescence, the way she thinks is largely fixed. So the
more you encourage your children to use more of their minds in order to
think more creatively, the more likely you are to raise exceptionally
creative children.
Here are five suggestions for encouraging and maintaining creativity in your children:
1) Answer questions with questions
Children ask lots of questions. As parents, we tend to give
them direct answers. “What does ‘invertebrate’ mean?” a child might ask
while watching a television documentary. A typical parent response is:
“It means an animal that does not have a backbone.” There is nothing
wrong with such an answer. It is correct. It provides your child with
the information she seeks. But, why not ask: “What do you think
‘invertebrate’ means?” Your child has just watched a documentary about
animals and has a lot of context in her mind. Very likely she can put
that context together and hazard a good guess. Indeed, she has possibly
done this already and is simply seeking confirmation.
If her answer is
correct, reward her and ask her how why she felt it was the correct
answer. If her answer is wrong, reward her and ask her why she thought
this was the answer. Then, reward her thinking and explain the correct
answer. If you are not sure about the correct answer, see the next
suggestion. Encouraging your child to gather information and make
deductions based on that information is a form of creative problem
solving. Make it a habit!
2) Find Answers Together
As your children grow older, they will increasingly often
ask questions that you cannot answer. As a parent, you may occasionally
feel the need to cover up your ignorance. After all, your children look
to you as the ultimate source of knowledge. At other times one of your
children will ask a question in which you believe you know the correct
answer, but are not sure.
Rather than hazard a guess at the answer, a better response
is, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure. I believe the answer is…” and then
add, “Let’s find out the correct answer.” Then do some research with
your child in order to find that answer. That research may be a simple
matter of searching on the web. But do not neglect other possibilities.
Perhaps you have a book on the subject. Fetch it and look it up. Your
child might be interested in reading the book. Go to the library. Before
the age of the web and Google, libraries were the best information
resource available. They are still wonderful places of reference with
the added benefit that you often find interesting information that you
were not seeking.
3) Reward Failure
We all talk about the importance of accepting and
rewarding failure in business. Yet all too many parents punish failure
directly or indirectly. Your son enters a swimming competition and comes
in last. How do you respond? “Maybe swimming isn’t for you?” “I told
you that you had to practice more!”. Even a caring parent is likely to say
something dismissive “It doesn’t matter. I love you the way you are.”
Sadly, all of these responses are likely to
discourage your son from ever entering a swimming competition again.
Worse, they might discourage him from trying other things in which he is
unsure of his capability. A far better response is, “I am so proud of you for
entering the swimming competition and trying so hard.” And if your son
feels badly, do not immediately tell him it doesn’t matter. Instead ask
him, “why do you think you came in last?” This gives him and you a
chance to analyse the problem so he can do better next time. Maybe he
became too nervous and wasn’t breathing correctly. That’s great! Now you
can talk about how he can deal with nervousness and breathing next
time.
4) Teach Cooking
Cooking and especially baking, is an incredible creative process. Think
about a cake. You start with flour, eggs, sugar and a handful of other
ingredients. Mix them and bake them and you have a wonderful cake. Once your kids learn the basics of baking a cook, making
cookies or frying an omelet, let them experiment. And do not correct
them beforehand unless they are endangering themselves, others or your
kitchen. If they want to put twice as much chocolate in the cake, let
them. If they want to see what happens if they use a brown sugar instead
of white sugar, let them. Chances are, they will not ruin the cake. But
by experimenting and seeing what happens, they learn a valuable
creative process. Moreover, when things go wrong, they can often be
fixed. The cake is too dry? Make a moist frosting. This is creative problem solving at its best!
5) Feed Your Child A Healthy, Balanced Diet
A healthy mind and body feel better, deliver more
energy and think better. Moreover, if you get your children in the habit
of eating healthy food from an early age, it will form a life-long
habit. They will be far less likely to have weight problems or health
problems as they grow older. They will look better, have more energy and
smell better. And most importantly, in the context of creativity, they
will think better.
The amazing thing is,eating a healthy diet is remarkably easy. It is a simple matter of getting a suitable balance of the key
food groups while minimizing the amount of sugary and fatty foods you
eat. In addition to eating a balanced diet, allow kids to
stop eating when they are full and restrict the amount of sweets and
non-healthy snacks they can eat (though let them eat healthy snacks,
such as fruit, when they are hungry between meals). Forcing children to
eat all the food on their plates and rewarding them with a huge dessert
if they do so only encourages overeating.
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