Raising Creative Kids
Nurturing creativity and the power of providing an example of a viable creative career
This letter was originally sent out to subscribers of the Love:Letters mailing list, a weekly longer-form email series from the desk of Ryan Hamrick at ALFA Studios, on July 28th, 2019.
I had another great time guesting on Adobe Live this week. Always so fun, and this time I got to really play with some things I definitely don’t do as often as I’d love to, like doing a deep dive on Photoshop brushes!
At one point in the stream from day two, my host Erica Larson asked me about raising creative kids, sending me on bit of a tangent (not hard to do), which I thought might be perfectly aligned with the spirit of our letters here. If you want to jump straight to the timestamp of this part, you can click here, or click on the image above.
Erica asked, “What’s it like to raise a creative child, being a creative dad?”
This is something I do try to marinate on quite a bit, while it’s happening, and as their interests change, old ones fade away, and new ones come around. I think about how I felt in those stages of my childhood, as I became interested in new creative outlets. I wouldn’t say that my parents were unsupportive of my creativity by any means, but their life experience was very different than the one I’ve lived through since, and that necessarily shaped the future they were capable of seeing in my continued pursuit of those aspirations.
My father, being a very talented artist and wildly creative person, has lived his whole life thinking about all the ways he could have made a living with that part of himself, only to exist in a reality where the only way to make ends meet was to settle for more conventional work. Work often very much adjacent to his creative talents, but never satisfyingly so.
Creativity is less central to my mother’s being, for sure, but she too was always very clever and creative with all sorts of things. One thing that sticks out in my memory was the planning of events as a school room mother, for instance, and I see that same streak turning back up all the time today with how much fun she makes for my kids when they’re with her. On a recent visit to stay with them while Brooke and I went on a trip, she had planned a different themed night for every day she was here. Things like Christmas in July, where they went ice skating, hit Starbucks for warm, sugary drinks, made and decorated cookies, and even drove around listening to holiday tunes while blasting the air conditioning in the car.
Perhaps most importantly though, she spent all the years she did with my father, surely seeing him struggle with the reality of needing to make a living and contribute to their life together, while never being able to find that creative satisfaction. I honestly don’t know all the details around why my parents ultimately split, as it was relatively soon after I was born, but judging by the sharp contrasts between Dad and my stepfather, it’s impossible not to draw some clear conclusions about the desire for stability and normalcy that must have been fundamental in informing Mom’s moves.
As a parent myself, for over 14 years now, I feel like I have a deep understanding of how those experiences could make one hesitant to offer wholehearted and unconditional support when you see those same inclinations start to appear in your children. It certainly can’t make it any easier, when the creative pursuit that your caucasian son seems most drawn to is to become a rap artist…yeah. I mention this briefly in this Adobe Live tangent and in my 20+ minute spoken word poetry portion of my keynote presentation at Typism last year, but from about age 15, through maybe a year or so after my son was born, my primary focus in life was to make a career in hip hop. That’s probably a great topic for another letter, too.
CREATIVITY POSITIVE
My father’s father was incredibly talented creatively as well. A skilled painter and a brilliant woodcarver, my days spent with him in his attic/workshop in St. Louis while Dad worked during my summer visits there, were full of exploration and witnessing artistry up close and personal. Though he never made his living with those talents, either.
But what happens when a branch of that family tree decides (and has the privilege and environment) to pursue his creative urges to the point of achieving things that could realistically be considered success? What happens when the only thing his own kids have ever really known is a comfortable life where one their parents has independently worked for themselves, making real money doing what they love and being creative, for as long as they can remember?
That age old conception that it’s important to “have a backup plan”, or even get a “real education” so you can then “get a real job” — proven perfectly valid in so many unsatisfied creative lives for generations — means nothing to these kids.
And why should it? How could I, in good faith, argue that they shouldn’t believe they can make a great life doing what they truly want to do, even if that means doing something outside the boundaries of a conventionally successful career path?
I’ve decided to stand firmly on the side of fostering and encouraging every spark of creative interest and fascination that my kids have. My daughter loves crafting and painting, and she has her own little craft station and desk in my home studio, and makes far more use of all the art supplies and paints than I ever do.
My son, with no influence or encouragement from me, has somehow found all the same love and passion for music, production, and song writing that I had at his age, only he found it even earlier — and he is good. I built him a custom loft bed that gets it up off the floor and makes room to use more of his floor space for a music studio. I may even be writing a little bit again and exploring the musical side of my creativity, as part of a way to help promote and market his art better and more intuitively, if nothing else.
I obviously can’t know for sure if taking this approach will make a wildly better or even different resulting life for them at all. We still emphasize and stress the importance of doing well in school, of course. Of being responsible, and making decisions that are rational, considerate, and thoughtful. But if their creative outlets make them happy, and they show a serious, lasting dedication to them, it just feels like it would be far more harmful than not to try and steer them away from those, toward things that might be safer and more mainstream.
I’m excited to see how this plays out for them. So far, we’ve seen a couple immediate effects, though. Their growth and development in the areas they’re passionate about has been undeniable and astounding. The freedom to explore and dive deep into those creative instincts had led them to do so with zeal, and it’s paying off.
More importantly though, at least to us, is that as they enter these stages of teenage life that so often are incredibly difficult, confusing, and trying on all the relationships in a kid’s life — they’ve stayed improbably close to their parents. Our closer-than-average gap in age surely plays a role in that, too, but being genuinely interested in the things they love and care about has thus far fostered beautifully strong and close relationships between us all.
They could just as likely grow up to find an even stronger passion for accounting or science, for all we know. But if we can keep our babies close and open with us, we can know what those changing interests are, and support them in whatever else they do, too. Feels like success to me.
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’Til Soon,
