It means different things at different ages, but creativity in children couldn’t be a more important topic. It’s a broad area, for sure, but some commonalities run like a thread through it all, from the Craft Whack blog to formal academic subjects. 

It’s a little problematic that many folks see creativity in an ironically uncreative way. For many, creativity is limited to the artistic domain. This belief is held so firmly that a lot of people don’t consider maths, science, or philosophy to be creative domains at all. 

Reconsider the Meaning of Creativity

For most people, creativity is exclusively an artistic phenomenon. Only dancers, singers, and painters are thought of as creative by this wrong-headed outlook. Allowing children to explore creative areas of scientific interest brings a literal universe into their lives. 

Encouraging children to think of the mathematical, philosophical, and scientific nature of reality will enhance their experience of the world around them. Even children who show little interest in this kind of questioning will benefit from it in the long run. 

Pexels

The critical thinking skills only found in these areas of human understanding can be picked up by toddler-age kids, provided parents are mindful of it. Allowing children to follow their thoughts is one exemplary method, while asking open-ended and prompting kinds of questions is another. 

Instilling a Questioning Ethos

A primary way of instilling creativity is by promoting a questioning ethos in your home. Encouraging children to assess things independently will have a ripple effect that touches every other aspect of their lives. 

The philosophical spirit is present in even very young children, so it takes almost no parenting effort whatsoever to get children into the mindset of examining and critiquing the world around them. 

Read, Read, Read

Exposing children to reading at the youngest of ages is a gift to them that will enhance their lives, as well as the lives of those around them. For pre-literate children, the reading itself will be on the part of the parents, but it’s the exposure itself that counts! 

We all know that there are books precisely tailored to all the ages of childhood development, so it’s easy to familiarise children of any age with narrative structure, grammar, and all the rest of the functions of language. 

Letting children, including the very youngest, explore the many worlds of literature and storytelling is a gateway into the formation of complex reasoning and thought-formation, which is about as creative as anything could be. 

Pexels

Final Remarks

Art is wonderful, and children absolutely love it. The way we raise children tends to place emphasis on artistic creation, which is a beautiful thing in itself. The thing is, though, it is only one of the creative arenas out there and by no means the most important one. 

Bringing up our children to understand the world around them in a rigorous and practical way sometimes gets overlooked when it comes to creativity. There’s an erroneous view that science, for example, is not a creative space. 

Ultimately, teaching children the broadest meaning of creativity will stand them in good stead for their futures and will likely positively affect wider society as well.