136 ways to
raise a creative thinker
® Heidi Klum and our “Candy Rappers” prep for Halloween
crazy-fun costumes* *that are so simple for you
50 fixes for “I’m bored!” 10 toys that teach 8 easy rainy-day crafts...and more!
toddler speech troubles when to worry
bust out of your food rut
fresh lunch and dinner ideas
anger management for kids
Win $10,000! enter at parents.com / holiday-tips
october 2013 PARENTS.COM
good values
inspiring
creativity
Creativity is the buzzword of our time and embodies much more than art, music, or writing. When kids approach problems playfully, they can tackle anything in life. photographs by Thayer allyson Gowdy
october 2013
126
parents
Flexible thinkers find new uses for familiar things.
good values
raise a trailblazer
T
he 5-year-old girl stood out from the throng of hikers striding up a steep hill. While the adults plowed upward, she leaned down, concentrating on selecting the next dusty rock worthy of adding to the collection she’d gathered up in the delicate tulle of her pink tutu. Her mother stood patiently nearby, neither encouraging nor discouraging, or commenting on, her young ballerinageologist’s project. I wanted to give this woman a high five. Rather than simply following the familiar path, the girl was immersed in her own compelling discoveries—and this childlike willingness to blaze one’s own trail may just be the most crucial skill for the 21st century. In our era of rapid change and daunting job competition, experts say that the
october 2013
128
parents
capacity for thinking creatively and bravely doing one’s own thing is essential for future success. After all, the modern definition of creativity isn’t just being imaginative, expressive, or artistic. It involves using mental muscles, planning, and self-control to produce something that is both original and useful. Many kids today will grow up to have jobs that haven’t even been invented yet, so being able to find fresh solutions to ever-changing challenges is more valuable than ever. Indeed, according to an IBM survey of 1,500 CEOs, creativity is now considered to be the most valuable trait for managers. Fascinating research by Jonathan Plucker, Ph.D., professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut’s Neag
School of Education, in Storrs, found that creativity tests given to elementary-school students in the 1950s were three times better than IQ tests at predicting adult achievements more than 30 years later. Having a creative outlook may mean that kids will grow up to design a radical new piece of software, discover a cancer cure, mediate a thorny global dispute, or found an innovative nonprofit. It’s helpful to know that there are two general approaches to problem solving: convergent and divergent thinking. Convergent thinking uses prior knowledge and logic to choose the one correct solution. This is the kind of thinking measured by most standardized tests with multiplechoice questions. Eight times seven is 56 … every time.
wardrobe styling by annie nicholas for ennis inc. prop styling by martha bernabe. grooming by susan donoghue for ennis inc. this page, on boy: striped shirt, splendid; pants, zara. on girl, front: shirt and leggings, old navy; skirt, boden; necklace, juniorbeads. on girl, back: dress, fabkids; shirt, crewcuts; cardigan and leggings, gap; necklace, juniorbeads.
You can encourage innovative thinking by letting your child take the lead. by WENDY MOGEL, PH.D.
good values Dressing up lets kids take small risks.
fresco artists, rappers, choreographers, general contractors, and even poets. Masters of the colorful metaphor! Sadly, however, cuts in arts funding, the emphasis on standardized testing, and parents’ fears about giving kids freedom to explore on their own are making it increasingly difficult for children to follow their creative instincts. That’s why we need to give them room to discover and lead the way.
Divergent thinking uses facts and experience to generate new ideas. Through brainstorming and freeflowing experimentation, solutions are tried on for size, and unexpected connections emerge. Of course, this is the mind-set that’s integral to creativity, and it’s what researchers like Dr. Plucker try to assess with quantitative creativity tests. For example, how many different uses can you think of for a paper clip? As a psychologist specializing in helping parents raise self-reliant, resilient, enthusiastic children, I october 2013
130
parents
have the opportunity to study family dynamics and parental expectations on a micro level in my private practice, while taking a macro view of larger trends when I give talks to parents and educators around the world. For the past year, I’ve also been interviewing employers about their new hires as part of research for my next book, and I’ve heard repeatedly that young adults are often afraid to think out of the box. The good news is that all children are endowed with massive creative potential. They may be natural philosophers, physicists, theologians,
Like the mom who watched her small daughter curate a dirty rock collection without panicking over a potential tear in a tutu, you can help your child develop creative zeal by doing less rather than more. “Treat your child like a seed that came in a packet without a label,” an anonymous educator once said. “You can’t tell what kind of flower you’re going to get or in what season it will bloom. Your job is to pull the biggest weeds, provide sufficient food and water, and stand back and wait.” Of course, when it seems like every other parent is racing to music lessons, private sports coaching, and Kumon sessions, doing “less” can feel like neglect, like swimming against the tide of parents readying their children for a global race. In fact, our culture’s focus on showcasing kids’ talents—as if every night is opening night on Broadway—can make them inhibited or even rebellious. The child who feels pressure to contribute his gifts to the family portfolio may withhold them. One boy told me that he was writing a secret play.
on girl, left: dress, fabkids; shirt, boden; fedora and leggings, gap; sneakers, wunway; scarf, zara. on girl, right: cardigan, boden; striped shirt and leggings, torly kids; shorts, fabkids; shoes, soludos.
be an enchanted observer
good values
“Why secret?” I asked. “I’m hiding it from my parents because if they find out, they’ll get too excited and then I won’t want to do it anymore.” For loving parents, it’s tempting to offer praise for every brushstroke, lyric, or strum. Yet making a big fuss over every creative gesture can sow the seeds of doubt rather than pride: “My mom thinks I’m such a great artist, so I better not draw something that will disappoint her.” Instead, just be a cherishing witness. Appreciate your child’s effort and intrinsic pleasure in his work. Talk casually about the process, not the end product.
go with the flow
On a beach vacation, I befriended the mother of 2-year-old Theo. I sat with her as she watched him fill a bucket with sand, carefully pour the sand into a sieve, jiggle the sieve to get all the particles through, and then scoop up the pile with the bucket and begin again. She told me he’d been doing this for three hours. “It’s so hard,” she said. “I want to interrupt him and ask, ‘What color is the bucket?’ or ‘How many toys do you see?’ But I keep reminding myself that this is Theo’s vacation too.” Children often seem to have a short attention span, but they can become deeply engrossed. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D., founding codirector of the Quality of Life Research Center at the Claremont Graduate University, in California, has devoted his career to studying how creativity emanates from what he calls a state of flow: engaging in a challenging and pleasurable activity so intently that you lose track of time. By letting Theo concentrate on his sand and strainer, his mother was introducing the toddler to the experience and habit of flow. As he grows older, this kind of focused and uninterrupted play might lead to the creation of elaborate sand castles and perhaps later to the design of new buildings or parks. october 2013
132
parents
treat your child like a seed that came in a packet without a label. you can’t tell what kind of flower you’re going to get or in what season it will bloom. embrace nature
In our digital age, spending time outdoors is especially invigorating for children. Using all five senses in the three-dimensional world bathes the mind and the body in the kinds of rich sensations that can’t be had with a screen. Playing and exploring in nature encourages children to repurpose materials and be inventive. Certainly, nature has always inspired painters and poets. As Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, “Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” Resist the urge to turn play into school. There is much to teach your child about the natural world, but he’ll be more mesmerized if discussions are driven by his own curiosity.
keep eyes on the prize
Although it’s normal for young kids to want to explore in different directions, we should be striving to inspire them to have patience and commitment. Unfortunately, when every 5-year-old’s dance class ends in a “recital” with bouquets, and every “emerging artists” exhibition is heralded with publicity, it distorts our children’s perception of what is worthy of celebration and the effort required for real success. Researchers who are studying the factors that help kids accomplish great things are now focusing on grit—the ability to stick with a goal even when the going gets tough. Gritty people are more like the tortoise than the hare, says Angela Duckworth, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and they’re less likely to get discouraged or distracted by new interests. How can you help your child develop creative grit? When she’s involved with
something that truly captivates her, she’ll be more motivated to stick with it. Your job is to notice and respect her unique gifts and inclinations—even if they are not ones that are typically recognized by teachers and coaches. Then try to give her the tools, materials, or opportunities to help her hone her craft, whatever that is. Kids need to develop skills in areas like music, art, science, woodworking, computer programming, or writing in order to be truly creative, and that requires time, practice, and sometimes even tears. This type of discipline and hard work is embodied by the spread of Maker Faires (makerfaire.com) around the country, family festivals in which kids and adults showcase their DIY creations that celebrate “invention, creativity, and resourcefulness.” To encourage persistence, make space in your home for ongoing projects—block cities, murals, machine constructions, or botany experiments—so that they don’t have to be cleaned up every day and can unfold over time.
celebrate the power of play Of course, young children should be focused on play rather than work. Creative play—whether it’s building a rocket ship or pretending to be aliens with a group of friends—teaches your child to rehearse scenarios in his mind and anticipate that his efforts will pay off in a way that delights others. As Bruce Nussbaum, professor of innovation and design at Parsons School of Design, in New York City, says in his book Creative Intelligence, “When people are playing, they take risks they would not ordinarily take. They experience failure not as a crushing blow but as an idea they tried that didn’t work. Play transforms
good values
october 2013
134
parents
20 ways to get started If I could work more fun and imagination into my family’s day in just 24 hours, so can you. by VICKI GLEMBOCKI Yes, I know. I knoooooow. In order for my kids to get their creative juices flowing they need only gentle guidance from me. As Dr. Mogel says, kids are natural risk takers, problem solvers, and uninhibited visionaries. But it’s our responsibility and privilege as parents to encourage their imagination and self-expression and, as the glue-gun gurus suggest, make your home a petri dish for creativity. That sounds great and all, but my interpretive dance card is already pretty full with cooking, laundering, policing homework, running baths, drying tears, breaking up arguments, driving children around the planet, and cleaning my house every 23 seconds to make sure it’s not a petri dish for the next wave of H1N1 instead. If my daughters, ages 8, 6, and 2, decide they want to paint sunsets at 7 p.m., I try my best to happily cover
the kitchen table with newspaper and pull out the watercolors and paintbrushes without moaning in my head, “Cleaning up this mess is just another thing that I’m going to have to do in ten minutes when they get bored.” Which, incidentally, is exactly what happens. Making time for my kids to have creative fun seems like a lot of work. “But it doesn’t have to be,” says Elizabeth Rieke, CEO and executive director of the Center for Childhood Creativity, a nonprofit in Sausalito, California, that coaches parents and teachers on how to help kids get their creativity on. “So often, parents do everything for their kids, even think for them. The key is to let them be the idea generators.” I asked Rieke for help. She showed me how to put myself and my kids in a creative frame of mind, with less mess and stress, at every stage of the day.
on boy: striped shirt and layered blue shirt, old navy; red pants, zara.
problems into challenges, seriousness into fun, one right answer into any number of possible outcomes. ” I believe that young kids whose parents value playfulness can continue to tap into this childlike quality as they get older. As the years go on, it’s easy for us to place increasing emphasis on performance and grades, but I have seen how that has backfired with today’s stressed-out college graduates. In my interviews with employers, I’ve learned that even young adults who had stellar transcripts and extracurricular activities are struggling on the job. They worry about carrying out assignments perfectly and lack initiative, decisiveness, and a zest for taking on challenges. Wound too tightly to think flexibly, they’re unable to come up with novel connections and solutions—in other words, to be creative visionaries. Thinking about their bosses’ frustrations reminds me of a highschool art teacher I met. Her students had been stymied when she asked them to do an assignment without very clear parameters. They’d ask, “But what do you want? What will you base the grade on?” Instead of giving them more direction, she decided to stock her art room with Play-Doh, Legos, and jumbo cardboard bricks. The students started coming in during their free periods to play and build—and suddenly they stopped obsessing about their grades on their formal art assignments. Remembering what it felt like to play and make things as a little kid was the creative fuel they needed to relax and think big. As for the young ballerina-geologist, she was already on the right trail. No smartphone, no agenda, no educational narration from a parent. Instead, she had self-directed, unhurried immersion in nature and the opportunity to collect the materials needed to curate her own art show titled “My Favorite Rocks. Collected by Me. All by Myself.”
good values
waking up
The “stretchy game” As you turn
on the lights and open the blinds, call out body parts to stretch—the funnier, the better. (Belly button! Earlobe! Bum!) “A kid’s body and mind develop at the same time, so anything he does to warm himself up physically also warms him up cognitively,” Rieke says. Plus, this challenges kids to tune in to their body and come up with unexpected ways to move it. When I shouted out, “Stretch your pinkie toenail,” my 6-year-old ran to the laundry room to get a clothespin, clipped it to the tip of her toe, and pulled. Arm the alarm Decide together on a good wake-up time, and show her how to set the alarm. Kids as young as 4 can manage this, especially if it’s preset and all she has to do is switch it from “off” to “on.” Make it her job to be in charge of it every night. She gets to choose which radio station it’s set to or which song on the iPod will wake her up. Fantasyland Flick the light switch as you announce that the bedroom has magically transformed into someplace other than a bedroom. An aquarium. A bowl of Jell-O. A gerbil cage. A cloud. Then ask your child to imagine waking up there: “How do you think someone would wake up in a rowboat in the middle of a lake?”
getting dressed
Their body, Their choice This one
starts with a parental ground rule: “Let go of what you think they’re supposed to wear,” Rieke says. “You have to relinquish some control if you want to raise creative children.” First-graders and older kids can really be given free rein to choose whatever they want. With my 2-year old, I started to pick out two shirts instead of just one and I let her choose. (Her favorite part was tossing “loser shirt” on the floor while yelling, “Nooooooo!”)
Suggest a theme Today
is ... Backwards Day! Pinkalicious Day! Cheer-Up Day! Send kids to their closet to interpret the theme any way they want to. Now, instead of doing a job—“getting dressed”— they’re creating something. Whatever you do, don’t become the fashion police. Nothing crushes a budding Stella McCartney more quickly than a parent saying, “Are you sure you want to wear that?” Turn the tables Let your child dress you (which means now letting go of what you think you’re supposed to wear). That doesn’t mean you squeeze into a bikini for school drop-off just because your son pulled it from your bottom drawer. In that case, say, “It might be too cold out for that. What could I wear that might keep me warm?” That way, he comes up with the solution.
brushing teeth
Time it Buy a funny-looking egg timer
(ours is a gray mouse) or snag the hourglass timer from your Boggle game and then teach your child how to use it. (The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends setting it for two minutes of brushing twice a day.) Now she’s in charge of the job and feels the freedom to do something on her own—actually one of the first steps to being creative. Think expansively Ask, “How do you think a monkey would brush his teeth?” Or, “How would you brush your teeth on the moon?” Tooth opera With siblings (or during sleepovers, or with you), have one brush while the other makes up a song about teeth (or bristles, or bad breath, or the Tooth Fairy). Then switch. Kids might even brush longer than usual just to challenge the songwriter to keep making up lyrics. In our house, we repurposed songs we already knew and, for some reason, my kids opted for a lot of Katy Perry: “Do you ever feel like
your teeth are gross, your breath is smelling bad, no one is coming close? ’Cause, baby, you must bruuuush your teeeeth! You really need to get them cleeeeean ...”
getting out the door Mama’s little problem solver
When you’re late getting out the door in the morning—again—don’t flip out. Later, at dinner, calmly mention, “We’re having trouble being ready for school on time. What do you think we need to do?” We try this tactic with everything—when the kids are bickering over something,
when they don’t like what I made for dinner, when they can’t get to the potty in time in the morning, which led to my daughter coloring an elaborate picture of a toilet that she hung on the wall beside her bed, to see as soon she wakes up, with the words “GO NOW!” written in red bubble letters. Mission impossible Make it a physical challenge: How do you get out of the house without someone seeing you? Without walking on the carpet? Without using your hands? When we tried “walking backwards,” there were some casualties (okay, I
on woman: denim shirt, h&M; shirt, gap.
You can keep creativity time happily simple.
parents
139
october 2013
good values
ran into the piano bench), but we actually left the house laughing, as in “not yelling.”
in the car
“I notice, I wonder” First you
make an observation: “I notice that the rain is really loud. I wonder why.” Or “I notice that your shoes have shoelaces. I wonder why.” Then shut your mouth. “Give children a chance to roll the idea around in their brain,” Rieke says. “And no matter what explanations they come up with, never correct them if they’re ‘wrong.’ Just say, ‘That’s an interesting idea.’ ” I walk my kids to school, and we’ve started to do a variation of this just about every single day: “I notice that the honeysuckle smells really good.I wonder why.” (This one led to my 8-year-old riffing about bee feet.)
Rhyme time Give two clues: “I’m thinking of a word that’s the color of snow, and a toy that flies on the end of a string.” (White, kite.) Or, “I’m thinking of the color that blue and yellow make, and what we do when we make a mess.” (Green, clean.) Maybe they come up with the rhyme or not but, either way, their brain needs to make connections between different ideas—a hallmark of creativity. Group story Whether there’s one kid in the minivan or five, start a story (“Once upon a time, there were five ninjas on their way to the beach”) and then say, “Next!” One of the kids adds a sentence to the story, says “Next,” and so on. One rule: no editing!
cleaning up
Change the rules No one likes to
“clean up this mess.” But breaking “the
job into unexpected categories challenges kids to think outside the toy box. First, ask them to pick up all the red toys. Then, the blue ones. The smushy toys. The ones smaller than their hands. Delegate Kids love to be in charge of things (“It teaches them self-direction, which is how creative ideas turn into action,” Rieke explains), so let them choose a cleanup job, which you offer with fancy-sounding titles: “Who wants to be The Counter Wiper? The Towel-Hanger-Upper? The StuffedAnimal Putter-Awayer?” Pretend Any time we can add a level of fantasy play, we fire up their imagination. So, we’re not just a family cleaning up before bedtime: We’re running a restaurant, or having a fancy party, or preparing for an alien invasion. We had the greatest success
kids don’t think about routine the way we do. they don’t think about goals, and that’s a good thing. creativity doesn’t happen at the end; it happens along the way to the end. when I announced we needed to clean up because someone important was coming over—“Justin Bieber.” It worked the next night too. And the next night. I started calling it “the power of the Biebs.”
going to bed
Break it down. Kids don’t think of
the nighttime routine the way parents do—a series of tasks leading to the promised land of “bedtime!” “They don’t think about goals, and that’s a good thing,” Rieke says. “Creativity doesn’t happen at the end, it happens along the way to the end.” We don’t
want kids to get into the habit of always focusing on the goal, the finished product, and we can do that by not focusing on it ourselves. One way is to make each step toward bedtime (or walking out the door, or getting into the car) its own special event: “It’s pajama time!” “It’s floss time!” “It’s storytime!” The first night we tried this, my husband got a little carried away and yelled, “It’s tickle time!” That pretty much defeated the whole “calming” part of the bedtime routine, but it was fun. Once. The two-minute story. Instead of always reading a book, make up a story
with your child as the main character: Mark the Shark. The Shannon-ator. Pause every now and then to let your child fill in the blanks: “Luke McSleepy lived in a ...” or “The Amazing Alexa got her superpowers by eating ...” (Psst: Giving the story a time limit lets the kids know they can’t stall by begging for more.) Wish upon a star. “Right before bed, my kids and I send a wish into the world,” Rieke says. You might need to prompt them to ask for something other than “school being closed.” But they’ll quickly catch on to the idea: “I wish ... dinosaurs would come back to life, my bed was made of cotton balls, I had eyes on my toes.” This way, they end their day with one of the most creative things they can ever do—coming up with a fantastical idea that’s all their own.