How Do You Raise Creative Kids?

Simple, be creative yourself. You provide the environment, role modeling, opportunities and inspiration for creativity.

1.    Live a creative life yourself. Read, do art, make crafts, schedule screen time, makeup stories, be creative with your clothes, create beautiful meals, and have fun with your children.

2.    Feed your imagination. Rearrange your living spaces, invent new crafts, have new experiences and involve your children in all the above.

3.    Play. Limit, through scheduling, screen time (t.v., gaming, internet etc.), and play board games, makeup new games, make chores into games and embrace messiness.

4.    Be open-minded. Take adventures with your children, try learning a new language, try on new ideas and beliefs.

5.    Don’t criticize yourself in front of your child for making mistakes, being the wrong size, or not being good enough.

If you live a creative life, so will your child. You are the number one factor in helping your child grow and nurture their creative mind. Research shows that children lose their flexibility, creativity and uniqueness as they age. By the time they reach adolescence, their thinking becomes more structured and fixed. But if children are raised with having parents who have encouraged them to risk and not be afraid of making mistakes, and have instilled an early love for stories, art, theatre, and dance then chances are those children will be highly creative. Children who grow up watching their parents fix things will have confidence to try fixing things themselves. They will believe that they can creative problem solve and be “handy”. Creativity comes from trying, learning, and being motivated to study, make and do. Creative children have valuable skills for life because they trust themselves to be capable.