Creativity Starts In the Home

Note:  Please know that anytime I’m talking about schooling choices, I’m doing so from the point-of-view that schooling should be a matter of prayer for all Christians. We aren’t called to make decisions like homeschool vs. public vs. private based on what is the norm or what we are used to; we ARE called to prayerfully seek God’s will for our individual family. That doesn’t have to look the same for your family as it does for mine (a homeschool family). BUT, I do believe that no matter what schooling choice you make, YOU, as your child’s parents, are ultimately responsible for all areas of their education (academic, Spiritual, life skills, EVERYTHING). That is a conversation for a different day and a different blog post, but I wanted to briefly address it here, because I know it’s easy to read something like this post and just see it as a homeschool mom criticizing the public school system. That’s not my heart at all; in fact, I would argue the opposite– that we are the ones responsible for these things, not the school, so there can be no critiquing of them here.

In The God of the Garden, Andrew Peterson tells about returning to his childhood home in Illinois and seeing a great tree near his family’s home; he recalls gathering at it with his family, and when he asks his dad about it his father responds “I used to retreat to it for some quiet time to ponder and pray. We would sometimes go there to read or share stories. I think of it often and go there in my mind.” Peterson follows his dad’s explanation by saying “On the wall of the art museum of childhood I smiled as I hung a picture of the Thinking Tree next to the plaque that read, ‘Why I Feel Close to God When I’m Alone in the Woods.’ Because my mom and dad modeled it for me.”

We joke about “becoming like our parents,” yet we all do, indeed, become like our mothers and fathers. Or perhaps we have always been like them, but those characteristics were buried underneath the teenage struggle to figure out who we are and the young adult desire to make a name for ourselves. I’m thankful to my parents for instilling in me a love of nature and books, a lifelong commitment to marriage, and the belief that the home is the most important center and conduit for God’s work. I also credit them with instilling in me creativity, although I don’t know that it was an ideal that was actually discussed much in our home.

Creativity in my home growing up looked like working with our hands, whether it was planting a garden, cooking a meal, or knitting a scarf. It showed up in how we were taught to name and care for our animals (we each had our own handful of cows that we were responsible for in addition to the normal household pets of dogs and cats and sometimes horses, sheep, and chickens). I saw my parents practice creativity each time they faced a problem and had to come up with a solution, whether it was the cows getting out or figuring out how to pay the bills that month. My mom was frugal before frugal was trendy; she shopped once a month for all our groceries, then spent the month cooking from what she had along with produce from our garden and the dairy products we had access to as dairy farmers. She never wasted anything but found ways to make use of it; I still cringe every time I throw away a toothpaste tube with that tiny bit left at the end that’s always too hard to remove, because Mom never did, she always got every last drop out. And they taught us to be creative as they homeschooled us, teaching us to take control of our own education and approach knowledge with originality and imagination. All four of us kids have grown up to be lifelong learners and employ creativity in our daily lives, despite the fact that most of us aren’t “artistic" in the traditional sense of the word. 

Could we have learned these things in a school setting? Sure, we could have experienced snippets of them here and there, and we all did when we later went on to either public or private high school. But mostly these ideals are going to be ingrained in our children from what they experience in the home. Why is there so little margin for or focus on creativity in our school systems? I think there’s a few reasons we should probably acknowledge.

1. Schools are working towards our kids passing the end-of-the-year standardized test. It makes sense that if the end goal for public schools is to get answers correct on a test, that creativity isn’t going to be a big focus. There’s no one right answer with creativity; creativity is about exploring many options, many solutions. And schools simply don’t have extra time to devote to exploring creativity and all it entails. Now, there are many, many wonderful teachers in our school systems who are building time for creativity into the margins of their school days; but the reality is they don’t have a lot to work with and aren’t going to be able to give it a big focus.

2. Schools, particularly public ones, aren’t working from a Godly perspective. I don’t want my kids to see creativity as a worldly aspect, because it’s not. Again, remember that creativity is one of the ways we worship the Creator and bring Him glory. That needs to be modeled by us parents, EVEN if your kids are in a private Christian school where they are hopefully seeing creativity taught from a Biblical worldview.

3. Creativity that is confined to a school setting will not blossom into a part of a lifestyle unless it’s modeled outside of the school. Research shows that the single greatest factor in a kid loving reading as an adult is having parents who read; we see the same trend in research done on kids who grow up to follow Jesus, and pretty much every other characteristic we want our kids to have. If kids see creativity as something only pursued in an educational setting, then they aren’t going to see it as worth doing once they’re done with educational institutions. The home is the single greatest influence for your kids because they will ALWAYS have a home; they won’t always be inside a school building. Our job as parents is to show our children what a Godly home should look like and equip them to have their own Christian home when they are adults. 

Maybe you’ve been reading these blog posts this week thinking that it all seems a little too idealistic, or maybe you’re wondering how to actually make creativity a focus in your own home. That’s what we are going to focus on over the next two weeks, looking at specific creative acts and considering how to encourage our kids in them, as well as considering some of the “hurdles” to creativity that often trip us up (dealing with the mess, making time for it, etc.). I hope you’re feeling encouraged that your home has a purpose for Jesus and that the work you do in it isn’t meaningful! Keep loving Jesus, keep loving your kids, and keep seeking His will for your family!