It’s up to us as parents to teach our children about the essentials in life. Whether we are encouraging them to eat well or helping them to study, the importance of creativity is something we can all underestimate. Creativity yields so many benefits. It can improve your child’s self-esteem, it can motivate them, give them a different view of the world, and many more things. And while children are born with great imagination as they get older, the creativity can start to disappear. It is so important for us to encourage our child’s creativity, especially as they get older and become more regimented in their lives. But how can we do this?
Provide a Wide Variety of Creative Activities
If we want to expand their imagination, we’ve got to provide many things for them to draw from. From drawing and using coloring books to singing and dancing, playing characters, and anything you can think of. There are so many different things that your child could do, and it’s amazing to see them make the most of something so little.
Encourage Questions
Every child gets to the stage in life where they keep asking “why” all the time, and this can be a little bit much for us as parents if they ask about every single thing, but we have to remember that their curiosity is what will serve them well throughout their entire life. We can use Alexa as a shortcut, but if you have a child that asks a lot of questions you can always turn the tables and ask them why do you think the sky is blue? They may very well say “I don’t know,” but you can encourage them a little bit more and help them to debate and break down a topic. The sky isn’t just about being blue, the sky is our window to space and the planets. There is so much you can do to get your child curious.
Don’t Force Them
In encouraging creativity, you need to give them a wide variety of things to choose from. It is important we embrace what your child is interested in rather than trying to force them into an avenue that you think would be good for them. If they like coloring, encourage them to try painting or drawing. It’s about taking their lead. If they only show an interest in playing computer games this may seem like a bad thing but while there are benefits to playing computer games you can gradually help them to do similar activities in real life. Re-enacting scenarios in games is a very good example. And if they like playing sports games, transferring it to the back garden and encouraging them to run around is the next logical step.
Find a Space in Your Home for Creativity
You don’t need to use a full room but if you are trying to encourage creativity, it’s nice to have a corner with a whole pile of creative springboards. You can purchase a small desk for your child and a couple of storage boxes full of crayons, pencils, papers, paints, play-doh, and the list goes on! Providing as many different artistic supplies as possible gives them a multitude of options. At the same time, we need to make sure that you encourage creative play. Giving them dedicated time to play every single day will become a habit in their lives.
Set the Example
As much as we encourage our children to be creative if we are not naturally creative ourselves, why would our children follow our lead? You can start by embracing creative activities that you like. You could start drawing or painting. If you’ve been meaning to write a diary for so long, this is another thing that you can do. And if you like cooking, continue to expand your repertoire. This is arguably the best thing to encourage creativity. A creative household is the best way to immerse your child in creative practices.
Making Mistakes Is Okay
Creativity is about not being perfect. When you encourage your child to be creative, you’ve got to just give them the freedom to do what they want. Creativity is about the play, and when you start to focus on correcting their errors, you can run the risk of encouraging perfectionism. Perfectionism is not a good trait in children so young. It’s about making sure that your children are trying new things, expressing themselves, and aren’t afraid to make mistakes. When it comes to creativity, this is the biggest barrier of all. If we find that we are too rigid, creativity loses its allure.
Cheers to being good parents!
Candy
