Thoughts on a Creative Home
Some of the happiest kids I know paint rocks. They turn somersaults in grass and swim through hula-hoops underwater. These kids skip a lot and jump over sofa pillows; they drop from trees and chase dogs. They tie knots, ride tricycles and pick weedy bouquets. They tape paper into chains, make snakes from play dough, and plant potatoes when given the opportunity. The happiest kids I know blow bubbles, whistle, and make mudpies.
Happy kids don't do every one of these goofy splendid things, but somewhere in their lives there is room for their imaginations to invent fun. The kind of imagination with no apparent purpose or goal in mind. It idles and hums along. It swoops and swings and unfolds great ideas. Our imagination may seem a small part of who we are, but there is little life beyond it. If a thing cannot be imagined first---a cake, a relationship, a cure for AIDS--it cannot be. We are bound by what we can envision. And the envisioning process begins in childhood.
Consider home the seedbed of creativity. It is where we learn to imagine possibilities and the ways to make them happen. One of the most important things parents can do to encourage this process is to cultivate a climate where creativity is welcome. Creativity does not require huge amounts of money, a fancy easel, or a computer. It does require a corner in which to create with a few supplies, the time to make it happen, and a certain amount of surrender to creative disorder.
Tools
Let's begin with the corner to create in. Not a room, a basement, or a studio. Simply a space where creative resources are handy. These resources can include a box of art supplies, a dress up box, and my family's favorite--an inventor's box. They are simple to put together. The art box is the most used resource box in our home; I include things normally reserved for adults like a good pair of scissors, and a paper punch. We have paper (construction, tissue, and typing), felt tips, tape, glue sticks, and bingo markers (bright nontoxic paints with a sponge applicator--available wherever bingo is played).
Whether you have boys or girls, toddlers or teenagers, a box filled with thrift shop treasures will last through years of plays, Halloween costumes and games of pretend. We have collected basketball uniforms, filmy peignoirs, cowboy boots and gold slippers. There are wigs and glasses, jewelry and hats in our box--all found at thrift shops and garage sales for a few dollars.
Our beloved inventor's box is nothing more than a junk drawer in cardboard. It holds rubber bands, scraps of wood, corks and wire. There is an old transistor radio, tiny motors from electronic supply stores and batteries to run them. The difference between a junk drawer and an inventor's box is by name and attitude only. These are supplies to invent with, not throw away!
The ideal place for your boxes is a room off the kitchen with a big old table. All children seem to create best under our feet, near light and familiar domestic routines. We are fooling ourselves to think kids will go down to a dark basement or an out of the way room to create. They want a corner where the project can sit undisturbed, where they can call out for us to come and see! In an accessible place, these boxes hold the wondrous ingredients of creation providing hours of self-directed fun.
Time
Time is inextricably linked with creativity. You cannot use your imagination, or bring ideas to fruition without the time to do it in. We unwittingly rob children of time in several ways--with television, and with an overabundance of activities where adults determine the rules, the process, and the product.
One summer afternoon years ago, I sat with a friend and watched my six year old fling herself into a swimming pool with boundless enthusiasm. She jumped and dove and somersaulted and cart wheeled herself into the water with certain grace and confidence. Jenna was unstoppable. There was no trick she didn't want to try. After an afternoon of watching this energy my friend urged me to sign Jenna up for dive lessons, pointing out that talent and attitude like that should not go to waste. I thought about my friend's daughter sitting beside us watching Jenna also. She was signed up for dive lessons. This girl had talent and attitude too. She spent several hours every week with an adult who told her to stand here, hold your arms this way, arch your back, lift your heels until there was nothing left to fling herself in the water with but an adult's idea of performance.
Let your child take the time to explore her talents without a right and wrong way of doing it. That one afternoon of being wide open and silly will encourage more risk taking and flexibility in life than months of lessons. Classes in music, dance, and foreign languages will not necessarily enrich our young children. It often puts them on a fast track to burnout at tender ages. The time spent on classes, practicing and performing can deplete creative energy--energy that could be spent at home, but not in front of the television.
For most kids, television eats more time than anything else. By simply turning off the TV you are adding hours of creative time to your child's day. It can be difficult in the beginning. A child will do everything in his power to convince you why he should watch cartoons. He may squall and act fidgety. He will ignore your suggestions for fun. He may fret and fume and stomp around yelling there is nothing to do!
These are good signs! It means your child is grappling with boredom. Think of boredom as an ally, for it leads to the place where ideas are born and carried out. Boredom is a big invitation to do anything to escape its clutches. Imagining your way out of it breeds resourcefulness, a powerful skill to possess in life. It is the skill that leads scientists, artists, and mathematicians to fool around with the ordinary and arrive at astonishing discoveries.
Tolerance
Most kids are equipped to make ideas happen. Most parents are not. It can be a mess. And we don't always have the time or the energy to pick up after one more thing. Creativity is not always messy, but the best activities often are. Think of it as a feast. When we sit down to a delicious meal, someone had to chop, peel, bake and stir their way to the food before us. There are pots and pans in the sink, and piles of dirty dishes. But you sat down to a feast, not boxed macaroni and cheese. Creativity is a feast, not a fast food. Someone has to paint and poke and glue his or her way through it. We sometimes need to remind ourselves to surrender to the disorder of undefined feasts, to give in to the grass stained pants and wet shoes and pieces of paper under our feet--to the mess in dirt and paint and scattered cushions on the floor.
Surrendering to disorder does not mean your child rampages through the day mashing clay into the carpet or moving restlessly from one activity to the next. Surrendering to the disorder is valuing the true creative drive in your child above your need to keep things collected and in place. It is saying yes when a child wants to make a highway out of chalk on the driveway or help make a batch of cookies. Yes to playing with Daddy's shaving cream in the bathtub and having a tea party with graham crackers and all the dolls invited.
This is the stuff of memories, of a childhood well lived. Years from now no one will remember with fondness the clean house and scrubbed floors. We remember the dandelion bouquets, and the hand painted cards. Surrendering to a child's imagination is being aware that there is no mess in the world that cannot be cleaned up. Not one.
Creative kids tend to be happy kids. They are the flexible thinkers, the dreamers and dawdlers. These kids are not tethered to the probable, not satisfied with mainstream solutions to solving problems. They are the ones who take risks with new ideas, and then take the ideas further than most. They can grow into tomorrow’s Einstein, Picasso, and Spielberg. And even if our children do not become household names for their creative pursuits, they can rise up and into their own lives with the future stretching before them as a horizon of possibilities.
Recent Comments