Looking for a way to keep the kids active and away from the TV screen this summer? Tom Sturges has a few tips for parents.
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I have devoted a good portion of my adult life to children, whether raising three of my own, coaching 28 different sports teams, volunteering to teach 1000+ students at my local schools, or mentoring and teaching another 300 in one of Los Angeles’ most challenged inner city neighborhoods.
I have found that children love to be creative. It is them at their most “them.” If it is set up in their minds the right way, creativity helps them access freedom that they have likely never known. But since they do not know how it happens, or when it happens, or how to manage it when it does burst upon them, they look to us adults to guide them. And guide them we must.
But before you begin, you have to have a basic understanding of what creativity is, especially what it is to your children. Creativity is many things, but at its most basic, creativity is any idea you have never had before. New thoughts, new imaginings, new possibilities…all are the creative instinct flourishing. So knowing that the goal is to inspire new ideas, here we go.
Five ways to keep you kids creative this summer.
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First, Pick a Great Project. This can literally be anything, whether painting or sculpting, building or drawing, designing or destroying, or writing a novel. All have some significant element of creative purpose. But what your child chooses depends upon what he/she is passionate about. You have to help them discover what that is. Maybe the project will take all summer to finish, like redesigning the front yard, or just an hour that will be repeated over and over, like painting portraits of all family members, or writing another chapter for their on-line book club. But whatever is ultimately chosen, you must support it entirely.
Second, Establish a Best Time of Day. One of the great songwriters of this era, a woman named Diane Warren, believes that the key to her success is her ability to constantly access her creative spirit on a regular and repeatable basis. She has it trained. Every morning at 8:30, no matter what did or did not happen the night before, she writes. And writes. And writes. She has come to terms with her instinct and they meet with clocklike regularity.
Do the same for your children this summer. Establish a time each day that their project will begin, and stick with it like it is the Changing of the House Guards outside Buckingham Palace (every day at 11:15, no matter what!). No wavering on this point. Start at the same time and it give your creative children some easy guidelines to follow in order to better access and enjoy their creativity.
Third, Encourage & Enable. Unless you are Pablo Picasso himself, who are you to tell your nine year old that her painting lacks artistic merit? Kindly remember your place, sir. You have one purpose in the proceedings and that is to purely and unadulterated-ly ENCOURAGE HER CREATIVITY! That’s it, nothing more. (And if you are Mr. Picasso, welcome back!) Be supportive of her ideas, no matter what you may think of them personally. Creativity is more of a path of discovery than it is a final destination to be reached. Guide her but do not beguile her — if it’s not her natural talent, she’ll figure that out soon enough.
My friend Susan has a son who loves to come up with stories, and these are amazing things, complicated and full of different characters. The problem is that his hands don’t write as fast as his mind thinks, and next thing you know he gets backed up like a porta-potty at a county fair. Her solution? Dictation hour. She sits at the computer and types while he wanders around and speaks. She captures every idea as it flies out of him. He feels great about himself and what he’s done, and so does she. Most importantly, they have a great time together.
Fourth, Some Warm-Up Drills. It’s not enough to just say, “Okay, be creative!” Children have to limber up their intellects, stretch out the acumens, get their neurons firing and get their synapses connecting before they begin, if at all possible. .
My favorite creativity warm-up is a game I invented called The Excellent Question Game. In this game, all participants have to ask a question to which they Do Not Know The Answer. The subject of the questions can be specific (Outer Space, The Sun, Bees, or Trees, for instance) or general info (where any question on any subject is fine). Oh yes, one more thing. There are no answers in The Excellent Question Game. Just questions. This is not a game that tests what they know, rather it encourages children to find out things that they don’t know. Meanwhile, every question is a new idea, a new thought, and is thus creativity springing to life.
Just to mention, this is also a great game for road trips, long lines at theme parks, and waiting for delayed flights in airport lounges, as well as preparing for creativity.
Fifth, No Video Games. If you intend for any one of your children to achieve any level of creativity whatsoever, you will have to make them put down the video game controllers, the hand held devices, the i-phones with game apps, the electronic poker games, the hello kitty chase down the alley game, and whatever else.
There is nothing less creative that you can do to or for your children than give them a toy that does all the thinking for them. This is why children love these devices so much – when they are playing with them their brains are on standby.
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Yes, this is not an easy milestone to achieve. So, at the very least, shut everything off during creativity time, or leave video games as a reward for great creativity. Then, as the summer progresses, stretch or shrink the time period as required to help your children maintain their sanity.
Creativity has to be a joy, or your children will come to view it with the same suspicions that arise when you mention there is an appointment with the doctor coming up on the calendar. Make it a joy by being a part of it, by being with them when they create, by being a part of their creative team. By introducing them to their creative spirit, you bring them face to face with their instinct and passion, two elements of their humanity that they should never learn to live without.
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Photo credit: Alba Soler/flickr