Are you not sure how to inspire the creativity gene in your children? Some may think, ” oh, my kid is not born with that talent.” But, wait! What if I told you being creative isn’t a genetic trait. Say what?! That’s right! Us as parents can encourage and do certain things while raising our kids to inspire their creativity… and I am going to tell you how.
How does this benefit children?
Helping and encouraging your children to be creative have so many benefits. Here quick list of 10 ways inspiring creativity in your children benefits them emotionally, physically, and mentally.
- Enhanced Problem Solving Skills and creative thinking
- Increased Self-Esteem
- Increased awareness of different perspectives.
- Help manage stress, reduce anxiety and depression
- Increased motivation
- Promote and Encourages self expression
- Increase brain function
- Helps develop fine motor skills and coordination
- Helps increase ability to focus
- Can act as a mood booster and increase overall happiness.
Introduce them to a variety of different creative elements.
How to Inspire Creativity in your children step one – Introduce and expose your children to different creative elements. This gets their creative mind flowing. This also helps you find what they are passionate about. When introducing different elements let them have free play to explore. This will also help you determine what creative art they enjoy the most. Do they like drawing, painting, writing, crafting, singing, dancing, acting, baking, etc. If they are never exposed to all the different ways they can be creative they and you will never know what they are truly passionate about.
Create a designated space for them to be creative.
Set aside a space in the home for them to be creative and stock this space with creative materials. Don’t force your child to do any activity – this takes the fun out of being creative. If an activity is forced they will lose interest. However having a space they can go to stocked full of their creative favorites is a great way to encourage creativity in the home. If you need a guide on how to set this up for your children. Check out my blog post next week. I will go into how to set things up and organize a creative space that’s easily accessible for your children.
Encourage questions and Problem Solving
Encouraging your kids to ask questions gets them focused and spikes their interest. If they don’t ask questions at first, try asking them questions. What causes a rainbow? How do bicycles move? How many different ways can you use a Popsicle stick? Even if they don’t have the correct answer it gets them in a problem solving mindset.
It’s okay to let them be bored
Boredom is what happens before creativity starts. Give your children down time to be bored. This will give them time to think and create new ways to entertain themselves. This also, again encouraging their problem solving skills.
Allow for free time or free play
Some children have quiet the busy schedules between school and extracurricular activities. Allowing and possibly even scheduling in free time is just as important. During free time children have the biggest opportunity for self expression which increases their self confidence and independence.
Let them see you being creative
Lastly, let them see you being creative. It can be anything from coloring to fixing something that broke, singing, dancing, the list goes on and on. But having a role model to show you how is always a bonus. Remember and try to show your children that their is no right or wrong way when it comes to being creative and the opportunities for being creative are endless. For your convenience I also put together this quick infographic:
Only 6 Steps!
That was easier then you thought wasn’t it? Inspiring creativity in children really is that easy. Luckily for us parents young minds are all naturally more creative. All, we have to do is give them the space and tools and let them be bored. It’s when they get older and have a more structured and demanding lifestyle does creativity tend to diminish. Let me know in the comments if you found this post on How to Inspire Creativity in your Children helpful! I love to hear from you all, honestly makes my day.
All the love,
Lindsay
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