How Do You Encourage a Creative Child?
I have an eight-year-old daughter who has a beautiful imagination, and I’m not sure how to promote her creativity.
I am not a very creative person. Sure, I can copy an idea, but I seriously lack original creativity. My daughter, on the other hand, has creative juices that run wild!
At the age of eight, she has already made a short children’s chapter book, written a few poems, and created numerous picture-only books. She is constantly reading, always thinking, and often creating. If there is a pen nearby, she’ll soon be drawing something, and her schoolwork is always covered in doodles. When she was six years old, she made a how-to video of how to draw Cinderella. Her drawings are not extraordinary, they are fairly typical of an eight-year-old, but there’s something in the thought behind them that makes them different.
Since she was three years old, she has been coming up with short stories. While she’s playing dolls with her sisters, she’s always the one in charge of creating the storyline. When we’re just out for a walk or out on the lake, it has to be more than reality, and she makes up a story to go alongside what is happening. On our walks, we are lost children searching for a warm home, and on the lake, we are pirates. Always so many ideas.
I can tell there is so much going on in that sweet little head of hers, and I want to encourage it, promote it, and further it; I’m just not sure how. At home, we always praise her work and ideas. So I try to find different crafts to do together and YouTube drawing tutorials.
My question is, where do we go from here?
She has a hard time facing challenges; if she can’t do something perfectly, she has a hard time moving forward with it. How do we foster her creativity without making it seem like something that’s challenging or undesirable? How can you keep it fun while helping her progress in it?
If any of you that are blessed with creativity have insight for me, I would appreciate it! What helped to push you along in your creative endeavors the most? In what ways were you encouraged in your childhood to pursue your passion? If you feel as though your creativity was thwarted, what thwarted it?
Brooke
