Content

• To step
• Method 1 of 3: Contribute to your child's creativity
• Method 2 of 3: Nurturing your child's creativity
• Method 3 of 3: Encourage decision-making
• Tips

Every individual is born with creativity. Creativity is the use of imagination, originality, productivity and problem-solving skills when dealing with a situation. Many people don't see creativity as an innate quality, but as a skill that can be developed, and the more you develop it, the more creative your child can be! While art is a common means of inspiring children's creativity, there are many more ways to develop children's creativity!

To step

Method 1 of 3: Contribute to your child's creativity

1. Be a role model. Be free in your thoughts and open to many solutions to many problems. Show your kids that you are flexible and willing to try new things. When faced with difficulties, show your children that you can approach and solve the problem in different ways.
   • When your kids ask you a question, be creative in how you answer the question. You can discuss various solutions with your child before answering the question. For example, your child may ask "where does the rain come from?" Then you can start by asking yourself “well… it comes from the sky… what else comes from the sky? Could it come out of that? ”
   • If your child asks how to draw a heart, show many different ways to draw a heart (such as with straight lines, dots, or by drawing flowers in the shape of a heart), even an anatomical heart, and ask than your child to come up with some.
2. Cherish unstructured playtime. Let your child have unstructured playtime, where you don't interrupt, direct the game, or make suggestions. Choose toys for your kids that don't have a specific purpose, but let your child use them in many different ways.
   • Encourage activities such as painting, drawing, and building.
   • Avoid cause and effect toys such as boxed devils and other such toys as much as possible.
   • Do not correct your child's play unless there is obvious conflict.
   • If your child says "I'm bored," get some toys, start telling a story, and let your child finish it. For example, you can put some dolls and say they travel all over the world. Their first destination is in Prague, where are they going next? Which places do they want to see? How long will they travel, and how many countries will they visit?
3. Provide resources. Create separate areas for activities, especially messy ones. Create an art space where your kids can paint and mess without affecting the whole house, or a dressing room where all the clothes are. When it comes time for gifts for Christmas or birthdays, ask for craft supplies, musical instruments, building supplies, and costumes.
   • Reuse things you find around the house: empty kitchen towels and toilet paper rolls can become a sword or a sailing boat.
   • Challenge your kids to make common household items such as paper, packaging and wrapping paper rolls.
4. Generate ideas. Make time to brainstorm how to solve problems, create new activities, or create new things. Don't judge, evaluate, or talk about what would be appropriate, but encourage the flow of ideas. Don't choose a “best” idea. Focus on the idea generation process, not the outcome or evaluations.
   • When something is missing (for example, if you need to accomplish something but don't have a ladder) let your kids think about ways they can solve the problem.
   • Read a short story to the climax, then stop. Now ask your children what they think will happen next and how they would solve the problem.
5. Encourage mistakes and failure. Children who are afraid of failure or make a mistake can block themselves in the creative process. Children may also fear assessing or having their own work assessed. Share your own failures with your child, and emphasize that it was fine and taught you something.
   • Practice coloring outside the lines with your child, have them turn skin blue or purple, or do other crazy things to show that it is okay to do things differently.
   • If your child is upset because he or she made a mistake, find creative alternatives to make amends. If your child rips a page out of a coloring book, fix the tear with stickers, or draw around the tear to make it fit into the drawing.
6. Ask open questions. Some parents find that they always ask closed questions, such as "That's a beautiful flower, right?" or "That will be fun, won't it?" Instead of asking closed questions, you can ask open questions that allow creativity. Also give your child the opportunity to respond creatively.
   • You can say "What is your favorite flower and why?" or "What do you think would be fun?"
7. Limit screen time. Let your children watch as little television as possible or play with phones, computers or tablets sparingly, as too much screen time can lead to obesity, attention problems, emotional disturbances and difficulty sleeping. Instead, encourage activities such as reading, listening to music, drawing, or practicing a play.
   • Set a timer for your kids when they watch TV or use a tablet or phone so they know when the timer goes off, screen time is over.
8. Focus on the process rather than the end result. Bonuses or too much pressure can get in the way of creativity and make the child guess what you want instead of investigating for themselves.
   • Rather than giving compliments like "well done!" or “what a beautiful painting!”, you better praise the effort. Say "I can see you've worked really hard on this." or “wow, you used a lot of colors in your painting. How lively! ”

Method 2 of 3: Nurturing your child's creativity

1. Solve problems in different ways. Give your child a problem and ask how it can be solved. Then ask your child to solve it in a different way. Emphasize the process, not the final product. Encourage him to find many solutions to a problem and many routes to a solution.
   • Ask your kids to make a house, but be vague and say they can make anything they want. If they get stuck, tell them to draw a house or make one out of popsicle sticks or cardboard. Encourage them to make a house in more ways, to make a dog house, or a doll house or a house for a friendly monster.
2. Allow children to explore their interests. You may want your child to learn to play the piano or be a ballerina, but let your child choose which activities interest him or her. The more freedom a child has in activities, the more flexibility a child has in mind.
   • Your child will naturally be drawn to activities that he or she enjoys. Encourage exploring those activities.
   • Activities that can inspire creativity are music, dance, drawing, sculpture and painting.
3. Have your child participate in creative activities. Have your child take classes in painting, dancing, sculpting, or pottery. Art is particularly useful for children as it helps create and express a child's budding personality. Choose activities that allow the child to learn basic skills, but at the same time fill in the empty spaces with his or her creativity.
   • Find classes at a nearby community center or private studios.
   • Let your child be creative on their own, but also in collaboration with other children.
4. Connect your child creatively with like-minded people. Learning with other children can be exciting and educational. See if there are extracurricular activities or clubs where the kids can work and create together. Collaborating and allowing creativity to flow with other children can be a lot of fun, ideas and a lot to learn.
   • Children can create a dance, a song, a science project, or a functional item such as a boat.
5. Encourage multi-dimensional learning. Involve as many senses as possible in activities. Use movement, sound, structure, taste and visual information. You can also play music in the background. One way to learn multidimensional is to learn a song with movements or a dance, or make your own movements.
   • play with clay. You can choose different types of colored clay, with different structures. Practice making the sounds clay makes when it is pressed together and notice how it smells.
   • If you have an activity with just a few senses, make up the others. You can ask questions about the senses, such as "what kind of sound do you think this can make?"
6. Be careful not to label your child's theories as false unless it is absolutely necessary. If your kids tell you that the wind is made by trees, tell them it could be true and ask why they think it. By letting them develop their own theories, they can explore their own creativity! But be careful not to make them believe their unusual (and incorrect) theory is a fact; just indicate that it is a possibility.
7. Encourage all ideas and keep all comments positive. Stay positive in your feedback and most importantly, encourage your child to be creative. If you find yourself thinking “That can never happen” or “that idea will never work,” keep that to yourself and praise your child for thinking outside the box.
   • If your child wants to build a spaceship to travel to the moon, encourage the adventure without saying "That's impossible." Help collect building materials and encourage your child to come up with different ways to get to the moon.
   • If you have a hard time not rejecting your child's ideas, say "that's an interesting approach" or "I've never thought of that before."

Method 3 of 3: Encourage decision-making

1. Offer good opportunities for your children. Good decision making can also inspire creativity in your children. When your child has a decision to make, offer a few good options and ask your child to weigh the pros and cons.
   • For example, if your child wants to pick up a treat from the supermarket, you can encourage him or her to choose between two or three healthy options, such as a granola bar, a bag of dried fruit, and a container of yogurt-covered nuts.
   • Having good options to choose from will help your child make a good choice, while also letting your child come up with the pros and cons of each option. This process can help your child develop his or her creativity.
2. Guide your children through difficult choices. Letting your child look at a problem from various angles can also encourage creativity. If your child has a difficult decision to make, sit down with him or her and talk about the decision. Encourage your child to look at each option and consider the pros and cons of each.
   • Don't make the decision for your child, but help him or her make the right choice by discussing options together and asking questions to encourage your child to think critically. For example, you can ask, "What do you think the outcome of that decision will be?" And "What advantages does this option have over the other options?"
   • You can also sit down with your child after the decision has been made and discuss how it turned out and whether your child still thinks it was the best choice. For example, you could ask, “If you knew what you know now, would you still make the same decision? Why or why not? ”
3. Use hypothetical examples. Another good way to help your child improve both decision making and encourage creativity is to give your child hypothetical moral dilemmas. You can encourage your child to research different possible decisions, consider the possible outcomes, and decide which one he or she would choose.
   • For example, you can ask your child to imagine what he or she would do if a friend copied a test. Would your child report the friend? Confront the friend with copying in the test? Or say nothing?
   • Encourage your child to consider the pros and cons of each hypothetical possibility. For example, what could be the benefits of disclosing? What could be the drawbacks?
4. Allow your child to learn from wrong decisions. It may be tempting to intervene every time your child makes a mistake, but your child will learn nothing from it. Instead, take a step back and let your child make his or her own mistakes. What your child learns from these experiences will provide valuable lessons in decision making and can also inspire your child's creativity.
   • For example, if your child decides to use his or her free time after school for computer games instead of doing a difficult homework assignment, don't intervene. Give your child the opportunity to experience the consequences of that decision for themselves.

Tips

• Always tell your kids that every problem has more than one solution.
• Necessity is the mother of inventions; keep this in mind if you miss a baking ingredient or a photo is short for a collage.