7 Ways You Can Encourage Creativity In Your Kids
Creativity is a learned mindset that empowers people to find solutions for everyday problems and make order out of chaos. It can show itself through an aptitude for art, a love of cooking or an understanding of music. Many STEM workers rely on creativity for their daily work.
Creativity is a process that results in something that can be shared with others. With a little effort, you can start your kids on the path to developing their unique creative abilities. Here are seven ways to encourage creativity in your kids.
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1. Provide Creative Supplies
Giving your kids plenty of supplies is one of the best ways to support their creativity. You can stock your shelves with paint, colored pencils, coloring books, clay, slime, blocks, pipe cleaners, melty beads, sewing materials and more.
Experiment with different materials until you discover what your kids enjoy. Try to switch it up and add new materials every few months so they have an opportunity to try new things. You can also challenge your kids to create with natural materials like sticks, rocks and mud.
2. Make Time for the Process
Once your kids have access to supplies, it’s important to give them plenty of time to create. When they’re little, their projects probably won’t turn out the way they imagined. They’ll need to keep practicing and experimenting to learn how to turn their creative ideas into reality.
All of this practice takes time. Valuable learning happens during these in-between moments when your kids are exerting thought and effort to achieve their goals. You can support their creativity by making sure they have plenty of time to work through projects.
3. Teach Kids to Fail
Another way to develop your kids’ creativity is to teach them how to fail. Failure is an essential part of creativity. Without failure, technological innovations and famous portraits wouldn’t exist. Astronauts wouldn’t have reached the moon and archeological digs would never have been uncovered.
People tend to internalize and personalize failure as if it makes them a less worthy person. Fear of failure inhibits creativity because it prevents people from taking risks. You can use creative failures to show your child that disappointment is a positive opportunity. Kids can learn from failure to reframe their goals and find another way forward.
4. Allow Them Ownership
Many craft projects completed in school have predetermined goals. For example, kids are supposed to color inside the lines and their finished projects are supposed to look like animals or scenes from history.
While there’s value in teaching children to follow instructions, it’s also important that they have time to create simply for the joy of it. You can give your kids opportunities at home to experiment with open-ended projects that focus on the process instead of the end result. This will foster creativity by emboldening kids to take risks and try new things.
5. Let Them Be Bored
Boredom can be incredibly productive. When children are left alone with their thoughts, they come up with new ideas they would never have considered when busy or entertained. Another way to stimulate your kids’ creativity is to make space for boredom.
Many modern children turn to screens for entertainment when they feel bored. Limiting screen time can empower your children to create rather than simply consume content. Although it may be challenging at first, allowing boredom will lead to greater creativity and higher brain function in your kids.
6. Spend Time Outside
Nature has inspired creativity in artists and scientists for thousands of years. You can teach your children to notice and admire creativity by spending time observing nature in the great outdoors. When kids spend time outside, they learn to be creative with their movement and they develop healthier brains.
In the natural world, patterns of shape, color and texture abound. Although these patterns are sometimes predictable, there’s often a wild card that’s completely different and brings creativity to the mix. For example, flying fish have wings and can “fly” similar to birds. Children can learn a lot about creativity from observing the patterns in nature.
7. Support Their Work
You can also encourage creativity in your kids by being supportive of their work. There are two opinions on how to praise kids. Some people feel that praise will influence children to become parent-pleasers. However, other parents believe praise has the power to build their child’s self-confidence and encourage them to keep growing.
Truthfully, the type of praise you give doesn’t matter nearly as much as your relationship with your child. If you love them unconditionally, they will develop confidence and a sense of self-worth. Supporting them through failure can help them learn to separate their identity from the result of their work.
Spark Creativity in Your Kids
Children are creative creatures and there are many ways you can support the development of their individual creativity. They’ll take whatever tools and supplies you give them and design, build and create things you could have never imagined.
Creativity takes many forms, so don’t be alarmed if your kids don’t love the first few projects you introduce. Keep exposing them to new things that are developmentally appropriate for their age. The creative skills your kids develop now will build a mindset of creativity and personal confidence that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.
