Imagine this scenario if you will: you are expected to cook and present a meal, but you are not in a kitchen. Furthermore, you only have 3 kitchen tools to work with, a camp stove, and $13 worth of food. How hard it is going to be for you to accomplish your task?
Sometimes as parents we unintentionally limit our children in ways we wish they would grow, mostly because we’ve never stopped to think about it, or we’ve assumed this is how things are done and our goal will magically spring forth.
Take creativity, for example. Many times I’ve read moms who wish to expand their child’s creativity, looking for the right books to follow or the right activity, while the kids are doing page after page of coloring, or following instructions for some easy camp craft that can be made from household materials.
For about six years, I owned a small retail craft supplies business operated out of my own home. About half of it was mail-order, but I also sold locally and held classes, including an ambitious week-long craft camp for kids during spring break. One of the things I noticed was that in the adult classes, some participants had a hard time without any firm instruction or direction, even over things as simple as placing an accent on an item. Essentially, the adults I had the most problem with were afraid of doing it “wrong”. Children, on the other hand, had no problems with a vague sense of the end product and a pile of materials to work with.
Somewhere along the lines, adults don’t loose their natural creativeness, they get it instructed out of them.
So how do we nurture a child’s creativity?
Take your instruction books and put them away where you can’t see them. Now pull out all your craft materials, not just the kid’s craft items. Yes, I mean your craft items too. Yes, I really do mean the “good stuff” and things you’ve set aside for when they are older.
Instruct the children, if needed and when they want to try, on how to use the various craft tools you have. The craft punches, special scissors, pliers, glue gun – all those things. (Please use some common sense here too. I’m not suggesting you show your five year old how to use the rotary cutter. But your 10 or 12 year old might be able to handle it.) Instructing the child beforehand on how to use a tool safely will help keep down the risk of injury. Often children get hurt when they are trying to use something they haven’t been shown properly yet.
Now here comes the hard part: let your children use whatever craft materials they want to make something, without your instruction. If you really can’t bear to let the kids use certain items of yours, put them up somewhere for now. But please, let them examine and explore all the great things you normally set aside for yourself. A creative idea of theirs is bound to spark and soon they will be making something.
It doesn’t have to make sense to you, it doesn’t even have to look good, and in some cases you may feel they are just “wasting” materials, but I can asure you, we are working towards a process here, not an end result. If you have really small children who just want to cut things with scissors, give them used paper from the printer, newspapers, flyers and old magazines to start. Be sure to give them good scissors that you have tried yourself.
For example, I have a small selection of scrapbooking supplies, some of which were bought for a specific idea I had. One day, while trying to work on an album, two of our children hovered nearby and wanted to help. I do admit, I was torn between giving them free access and doing something for myself. Eventually, I identified a few things that I knew I really needed for this project, and let the other two use “my” stuff.
First, this was an example of sharing with them, even when it kinda hurt. Second, it helped the children expand their own creativity in being able to explore the function of new tools and products. Third, it was just plain fun. I was initially surprised when their efforts turned out better than I thought they could do, and a few of their ideas were things I had never thought of.
I know how hard it can be internally sometimes. We’ve bought materials to use up in making something, yet pace ourselves and stretch it to last as long as possible, as if the item (and sometimes it’s just a set of stickers) is more important than the child themselves.
By letting our children use the good stuff, we are telling them without words that they are important to us, as well as helping to expand the creative process.
What you say about adult creativity is so spot on. I am conscious of working on this myself. I also think it affect how many and what sort of craft supplies we have. Just look at all the discussions on knitting blogs about ‘stash’. Folks seem to feel really guilty about having lots of yarn in the house, much of it with no defined purpose. And yet, the really creative knitters have a huge amount of stash. This means that if they get an idea they can start working on it, no matter whether the stores are open. AND that when they don’t have any ideas they can get (some of) the stash out, spread it out and look at it and feel it and be inspired. I frequently experience internal conflict about not having enough stash and not really ‘needing’ any more yarn.
This has sparked other thoughts and I think maybe I should write about it on my own blog… Thanks for raising this question though. It is a really good and important post.
Fantastic post!
And corresponds with so many of my beliefs, for reasons I didn’t even know until I read them.
Thanks for this wonderful post which articulates everything I feel as well. It must be pretty off-putting for children to be doing directed activities when it’s so obvious to them who can do it the neatest and make it look more like the adults – how much more liberating to be enjoying the activity for what it is rather than focussing on the end product?
In reply to JoVE – for our oldest’s last Christmas present (she was 2.5 years old), I started a ‘craft box’ for her – one of those huge plastic ‘chests’ on wheels. I bought loads of different types of paper and card, and went to a local toy-shop and a local craft shop and bought loads of things for making collages – coloured feathers, beads, foam letters etc. etc. I bought loads of glue, brushes, paints – everything I could find for the budget we specified. It’s been the best present we’ve ever given her and has been added to over and over again over the last months. The girls get it out most days to do something or other – some days it’s just drawing, some days it’s painting and some days we go for the full-blown sticking activity. Glitter’s usually a favourite! As they’re so young, I always do it with them, but they get to choose what and, within reason, when they do it. It’s so delightful to see as our 18m old is doing things that my oldest could never do at that age, because simply because she has opportunities, having an older sister, that my oldest never had. When we move, I plan to start increasing our stash with free collectables eg. milk bottle tops; yoghurt pots; anything I can find that I think the girls might enjoy. It’s huge fun for all of us and their purely self-directed collages and pictures are so much more attractive than anything we, or anyone else, has tried to get them to do!
Will be linking to this post, Andrea
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Thanks all. I figured it would spark a couple of people. The very first time I noticed this sort of discrepancy was when I was a Sparks/Brownies leader. The head of the group kept insisting we do these really cute crafts for the girls that needed to be hot-glued, but she also insisted that we use her glue gun, which was too hot for most adults to use, and that only she could do the gluing. Every “craft” was pretty much pointless.
There are two ways aroudn this, for any passer-bys: use really good thick white glue for children’s crafts. Kid’s glue is only good for paper. Another way around is to pick up a few of the very cheap and low temp glue guns, which older children can use quite safely.
I also wrote in an email to someone that my grandmother had lots of craft things for me to use, but we had to be really frugal with it. Like powdered tempera paint. She made it so thin, so that it would last longer, that the colors were next to useless. Which I didn’t realize until I was older, saw how CHEAP it was, and noted that I had literally inherited the twenty-year-old containers of paint powder.
And I promptly mixed it up thick and bright, and let the kids use the rest of it up. Why do we think it is a waste to use up things we buy to … use up and make something with?
Oh, Andrea, you’re so spot-on! I catch myself all the time trying to get the girls to do it ‘right’. I think I may have inherited just a tad of the genes my OCD sister has, and I have got to fight that tendency!!! I also have a habit of waiting til just the right time to do crafts — when it won’t be too messy, when we have time to get the whole project done, etc. instead of just doing it. As a result, we don’t do many crafts at all. Could you throw some ideas out for 6-7 year olds?
Bravo – I forget now who told me this the first time but it makes such a difference. It is much easier and far more inspiring to work with quality materials. Besides – what makes the grownups so special that they get all the good stuff. Seriously – what kind of message does that send to the kids?
On an unrelated note: When you said “You are expected to cook and present a meal, but you are not in a kitchen. Furthermore, you only have 3 kitchen tools to work with, a camp stove, and $13 worth of food.” I thought “I did that for several months!” I’m guessing you could probably say the same thing. But it’s still a great analogy – I am far more inspired to cook interesting food now than I was when I had those limitations.