Life is Messy. Get Creative.
It’s not just children who stand to benefit from flexing their creative muscle
I recently recalled a brainteaser from long ago involving just a ping pong ball and a pipe. I decided to ask my children how they might approach it on the morning school run.
You’re in a room with some friends and have been playing with a ping pong ball. The ball falls into a deep, thin pipe. One end of the pipe is secured to the floor such that it cannot be lifted or turned over. How do you get the ball out?
My children gave a lot of cute answers, but they all involved tools like clothes hangers or hair dryers. I had to remind them they only had themselves. “What about body fluid?” I asked, which is probably anathema in a post-Covid world. “Spit! spit!” was my four-year-old’s reaction. “Yea!” my seven-year-old connected the dots. “We could spit until it floats up to the top! Or even pee!” They all giggled. (A more traditional version offers some tools including a tennis racket, shoelaces, and a plastic water bottle, but come on, peeing and spitting are way more fun.)
We all admitted that without prompting it would have been hard to get out of our comfort zone and come up with this outrageous solution. Devices present easy ways to solve problems without struggling with them ourselves first. And children, in particular, are taught to follow directions closely and tow the line from a very early age. They have very little unstructured time to just mess around and tinker. As a result, we may be hindering our ability to solve problems in novel and creative ways.
In life, we are constantly given problems that need clever solutions. Whether at work or at home, the most unexpected events can throw us for a loop. Mistakes are found in a presentation a few minutes before it is due to be shown to a client. A key mistakenly gets broken off in a lock. An accident on the street requires us to think quickly and help an injured person.
I recently noticed my kids would get frustrated or freeze when things weren’t perfect. A little brother spilled something on a presentation for school. We needed paints for a project due the next day but they were all dried up. It has encouraged me to focus on ensuring that they can think creatively on the fly.
Now I try to include my children in day-to-day creative exercises. What we might substitute in a recipe where we are missing an ingredient. What we can find to pull up a jammed drain stop — suction cups anyone? Even how we might decorate a room that needs some sprucing up. It’s not often adults ask children for their opinions and allow them to think outside of the box.
Tinkering, questioning and being totally preposterous are a part of life — we should encourage each other to be creative on a daily basis.
