How to Nurture Your Child's Creativity?

Every child has an inborn source of creativity in his or her personality. Creativity is something for which the child has the natural urge to excel and for this reason, the child takes extra interest for that particular activity. Nurturing creativity in the children could become a tough task in this age as parents want their children to study hard and excel in the exams like IIT JEE, NEET (AIPMT), BITSAT etc. Secondly, when nurturing creativity in children is very expensive, parents stay away from showing interest in encouraging the habits of creativity in their children. In rural areas, talent in the children mostly goes unnoticed because of lack of parental care. More than 90% of children drop off their habits to pursue their creative interests as they grow in age and face lack of time and money.

In India, parents have considerably changed their mindsets and now-a-days, they take interest in encouraging the creative urges in their children. They send their children to learn dance, songs, and painting and want them to excel in those activities. However, the pressure from books and regular homework hardly leave any time for them that they could devote for development of creative activity in them.  The important aspect about creative urges in children is unless those get proper care through parenting, children grow up only to show dullness in their studies. It is due to the reason eagerness to know about creative interests in children makes them indifferent towards regular studies in the classroom. All these make it almost mandatory for the guardians to take care of the creative abilities in their children, which would keep their offspring in good spirit and encourage them to pursue both academic and creative interests. The other advantage is when the parents properly encourage the creative faculties in their children; it helps in the flourishing of their personalities and makes them shine in every area of life. Studies show suppression of creative urges in the kids by the parent only result in mental depression that leads to slow growth in future life. Those have also revealed scientific ways through parenting could help the flourishing of creative talents in the children. Let’s know about some of them;

Born free to learn

Creative talents are inborn qualities.  Every person has the right to express through his creative skills. The parents need to convince their children that they are born free to learn any type of creative activity. It is the emotional security that helps the children to develop in their creative pursuits. Parenting has the only important role to play, where natural guardians of the child need to offer rock-solid support that would make the child feel emotionally free to learn. If the parents resist the interest of the children that would have completely negative repercussion on the growth of the child. Secondly, parents need to create an environment inside the home that would give enough mental peace to the children to pursue their interests. If father and mother of  a child have a disturbed relationship, it negates the attitude of the children in their development. Here, it stays the duty of the parents to ask the child to become more expressive through the power of creativity.

Know about the interest for creativity in your child

Children do develop casual interest with certain creative activity only to drop it later. The reason is either lack of proper parenting or whim in picking up a difficult creative interest results in loss of interest in the child. Parents need to see to the fact that interest in the child for creative things is not just a whim. When the child shows natural achievement in any creative area, certainly she or he has talent to mature in that area of creativity. Parents could even ask the teachers in school about the performance of the child in dancing, painting, and in any other activity, where the child competes with other kids. The remarks from the art teacher could highlight about interest of the child in areas of creativity.  Evaluation by the peers and words of praise from them help the child’s growth in creative areas.

Avoid emotional reaction

After all, it involves development of creative interest of the child. The feelings of dejection in the parents have no worth in the end.  Parents need to stay conscious about their negative emotional reaction, when despite best efforts children fail to bring any award in any competition in the areas of their creativity. Rather parents need to tell their offspring not to give up and try harder. Right parental advice is the right fodder for knowing creative things in the nature of the children. Parents would have to invariably keep up the balance in their words and actions, when they find that their children are trying to excel in their creative areas.

Creativity determines the values of life not monetary aspects

Unfortunately, most of the parents forget that pursuit of creative interest is for uplifting values of life not for winning awards and money. When foundation of creative learning gets a strong root in the childhood of a person, he matures and grows as a self-fulfilled human-being. Money and awards come in course of time and targeting them only brings futility and disappointments in life. When the parents make the children aware about such truths, they get matured in their views without making desperate attempts for money.

Passion is something to define creativity

When parents show their children that how they have stayed passionate with their own creative pursuits despite the hurdles, it motivates the children to try harder. When father of a child narrates before the latter how he used every penny to buy books to pursue his interest in writing, it touches the emotional chord of the child to try with equal passion. The parents need to understand the undercurrents of passion in the child for creative pursuit and motivate him to take up the right things in right earnest. For example, when a child spends hours in painting, parents need to understand that the child has the right passion for creative interest in painting.

Laughter, fun, and humor- inseparable from creativity

If parents know that their offspring has tremendous sense of humor, they could motivate the child to become a cartoonist. When the child has the capacity to create healthy satire, the parents could encourage the child to write satirical pieces in literature. When the child displays fun in his or her talk and behavior, the child could develop the skill to become a comedian actor in movies. All these attributes in the nature of the child are only god gifts and with help from parents, the kids could flourish in different areas of creativity.