How to foster creative thinking in your child

Brainyline August 25, 2021

0 25 3 minutes read

Table of Contents

Introduction

Creative thinking is a key aspect that rules every organization of the present era. Creative thinking isn’t just confined to art and music. Every work domain from maths to linguistics requires creativity to excel and prosper. This is why parents are highly advised to foster creativity within their children during their formative years.

Why foster creativity in children?

To sustain and survive in a competitive world, one has to stand out exceptionally from the crowd. Children are the future pillars of our nation. It is innovation and creativity that give birth to rational solutions for the arising problems.

Imparting one’s creative skills into the respective realms of work will not only make the individuals better problem solvers but will also enhance their self-confidence and decision-making skills.

1. Encourage children to read

Make reading a must-do activity in the child’s daily schedule. Buy them books to read and often take them to a nearby public library to explore short stories and novels of various genres. Limit their on-screen time and encourage them to invest more time in reading books.

This way, children will start visualizing the hidden beauty behind each book. As days become years, their skill to visualize, critically analyze, and interpret a particular literary work will improve. Hence reading is one of the best skill to foster creativity in children.

2. Trigger them to ask questions

While engaging in a conversation with your child, try to urge curiosity within them. For instance, take them out for a walk and discuss the reasons why the sky looks blue or what the science behind a rainbow is.

With time they will become more curious to know about the wonders in nature, the science and art behind every single thing they see around them. This will improve their observation, creativity, decision-making, and imaginative skills. Thus asking questions in turn foster creative thinking.

3. Give them time and space

Once they are done with the scheduled activities for the day, allow them to wander and roam around. Let their thoughts run wild and their imaginations bloom. This way they will explore what they are passionate about and may even come up with innovative ideas to tackle a problem. This is an effective and simple way to foster creativity in children.

4. Reward them with diverse materials

Encourage them to make something out of scratch. Provide them with various materials, as diverse as possible, to create something on their own. For instance, buy them aesthetic stationaries to create their journal diaries. Buy them accessories to decorate their room in their unique manner. This is often regarded as a great step to enhance identity formation as well as to foster creativity. Gift them with different materials that could be used for creating, designing, crafting, building, and drawing.

5. Guide them throughout the process

Childhood is the age where children are most curious. It is also the age where they are most passionate about trying out new hobbies, making new things, etc. As they take time to figure out what they are good at or what they are passionate about, guide them throughout the entire process, instead of focusing on the result. Be it failure or success, keep motivating and encouraging them during each phase of the process.

Do not negatively criticize your children when they fail despite several attempts. Success and failure cannot be stated in definite terms. It solely depends on the satisfaction and happiness a person embraces at the end of the day. Keep encouraging them as well as suggest the areas they could improvise the next time.

6. Approach a problem from different perspectives

While encountering several problems in life, teach them to view the issues from various perspectives. This way, it will help them to come up with a handful of solutions to approach and solve the issue. This is an effective methodology to enhance their prompt problem-solving skills and hence foster creativity.

Conclusion

Creativity is not an inborn talent. It would be more appropriate to address creativity as a skill a person develops with practice, patience, and time. There are plenty of techniques like brainstorming and reverse brainstorming to foster creativity. Parents must incorporate these techniques along with the aforementioned ways to improve a child’s creative skills.