Advertise

Outside the box!

 

Can your child draw amazing pictures like these? Does he create and inhabit imaginary worlds? He may be a creative

 

writes Robert Watts

 

It’s a sunny spring day and Joe, four years old, is drawing with his friend Evie. Joe starts to draw around his hand, something he’s been practising recently. Evie notices and copies him, carefully tracing the pencil around the shapes made by her own fingers.  

 

As Joe continues to draw around his hand, Evie suddenly stops, stands up, bends down and removes her shoes and socks.  She picks up her paper from the table and starts to draw around her feet, tracing footprints across the page.

 

Creativity is a difficult concept. We all tend to agree that yes, it’s a good thing, yet it’s hard to agree on what it actually means. Personally, I would suggest that Evie’s decision to explore the possibilities beyond her desktop is a perfect example of a child inclined to follow her creative impulses.  

 

Without being prompted, she’s thinking outside the box, adopting an unconventional approach to an activity, that will produce an outcome that hadn’t been anticipated.

 

Creative myths

 

There are one or two myths about creativity. We tend to think of areas such as music and art as creative subjects, but a creative teacher can make a science investigation just as creative as an art lesson.  

 

‘Works of art and scientific enquiry are both explorations,’ argues Dr Robert Fisher, author of Teaching Children to Think. ‘Both require imagination, reason and emotional involvement.’

 

Another myth is that creative children are gifted or talented in a particular area. Experts tend to agree that creativity is rooted in a more general approach to learning. ‘Creativity is not limited to those who are recognised as creative geniuses’, says Dr John Steers of the National Society for Education in Art and Design. ‘It is a commonplace human attribute; most people regularly solve problems in their daily lives with some degree of creativity.’

 

Perhaps the greatest myth of all is that of the child prodigy, leaping out of the cot with his poetry in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. Rarely is this the case, suggests Robert Fisher: ‘Creative thinking requires high motivation and persistence over a considerable period of time. One virtue of our long childhood is that the child has time to learn the value of practice and perseverance, to learn that in any chosen field making an effort will make a creative difference.’

 

Identifying creative kids

 

So, having established that they are not always easily spotted by their paint-spattered dungarees, how do we identify creative children? Charlotte, mother of seven-year-old Spike, has a few tips. ‘From an early age, Spike’s speech was fantastic and he had a huge imagination,’ she says. He’s always been quite surprising. In his nursery they had a display of work that children had made in response to the question ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ All the children wanted to be firemen, doctors, nurses or footballers - Spike wanted to be a shark. Little things like that made him stand out.’

 

As he’s grown older, Spike has invented his own parallel universe. ‘He’s developed an imaginary world called Spikeland where he has a pretend friend called Inchy,’ Charlotte explains. ‘There’s a secret door in Spike’s bedroom that takes you to Inchy’s world.’

 

Tom, who is six, is also overflowing with ideas. ‘Tom has a huge imagination,’ explains his mother, Nicki. ‘He was telling me a story the other night about a little boy on a massive adventure that eventually took him back to his room - but once he was back, there was a cave in his room and the story continued.  His teacher complains that his stories never have a beginning, middle and end.’

 

Creativity in the classroom

 

Tom and Spike clearly enjoy creating their own imaginary worlds, worlds that are firmly located within the comfort and familiarity of their own bedrooms: the security of these spaces encourages them to embark on journeys into the unknown.  

 

But what happens when children use their creativity at school? Often, their teachers become concerned that they’re not structuring their ideas in conventional ways. Dr John Steers describes a conversation with a spokesman for a school examination board in which he was told that: ‘Creativity is really important – but it must be carefully controlled!’

 

‘Spike loves learning,’ says Charlotte. ‘But as he goes further up the school, the focus on English, Maths and Science gets stronger, at the expense of creativity. Spike clearly misses the drawing, painting and junk modeling of his nursery days. My feeling is that he’s restricted from using his imagination. It’s a shame, because that’s who he is.’

 

While schools are understandably under pressure to focus on the Three Rs, it’s worrying that some seem actively to discourage signs of individuality. ‘In his infant school the children were asked to draw self-portraits,’ says Nicki. ‘Tom’s picture didn’t look like him as he’d used his imagination and added extra bits. The other children laughed at him and the teacher told him it wasn’t good enough to put on the wall. It really upset him.’

 

Encouraging creativity

 

What can we do as parents to encourage our children’s creativity? Robert Fisher identifies ‘two selves’ that often exist in parents’ minds. One is concerned with what he calls safeguarding –making sure that children are aware of any risk and danger - while the other is more inclined to encourage experimentation.

 

‘Sometimes it’s the safeguarding voice that dominates,’ he explains. At other times it’s the experimental voice. The ideal is to have the two selves cooperate fully.’

 

A damaging change in the learning process often happens around the age of three or four: a child learns to stop guessing and inventing answers when his efforts are rejected. After many rejections the child stops speculating. Instead he asks questions like ‘Daddy what is that?’ This setback can remain with a child for the rest of his life.

 

So, to encourage your children’s creativity, by all means stock up on the pencils and powder paints, but start by talking. Show children you are interested in hearing them articulate their own developing ideas. Ask them ‘open’ rather than ‘closed’ questions that have many possible answers. ‘All children are born with creative ability’, says Robert Fisher. ‘It is up to us to provide a climate to nurture it.’

 

March/April 2010

All information is correct at time of publishing