Raising Creative Kids

The first year we homeschooled I remember reading the tip to write a homeschool vision statement, a list of things that you want to be true of your homeschool. I’ve always been so thankful for what my husband and I wrote together back then, as we both come back to it regularly to help us refocus on what is most important to us as homeschoolers and even more so as parents. One item on our list says “we will strive to work creatively.” When you think of creativity, what do you think of? A famous painter’s work? Your child drawing a “masterpiece” with crayons? I think we tend to connect creativity with actually making art, but creativity is actually a lot bigger than this.

Dictionary.com says creativity is “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.” Creativity certainly shows itself in art, but it can also be present in writing, cooking, gardening, and crafts. And creativity is necessary to do well at any job, yes even the ones where you sit behind a desk all day, because it’s needed to help you problem solve, brainstorm new ideas, and see things from a different vantage point. I think we can all agree to wanting these skills for our kids, but in a culture where our kids are fed a steady stream of other’s opinions combined with endless “knowledge” via the internet, creativity isn’t going to happen as naturally as it once did. Again, I think we can see books come to the rescue here. Here are a few ways that books help our kids (and us!) strengthen our creative muscles.

1. Books show us normal story patterns and also variations of them. Consider for a moment reading and watching multiple versions of a classic fairytale with your children; we could pick any, but for the sake of this discussion I’m considering a Little Mermaid. In the classic telling of this story, the mermaid and prince don’t end up together. In the Disney version we obviously have the traditional happily ever after ending. I haven’t seen the newest live action version put out by Disney, but I’m sure it has influences from our current culture just as the older version was influenced by the culture of that time. Each one takes the same storyline and molds it into its own unique version. Now look back at that definition of creativity: “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination” (emphasis added). Obviously the creators of each version employed creativity in making it; after all that’s why they’re called “creators.” As our children are exposed to story after story full of these “traditional ideas, rules, patterns” and the variations of them, they will begin to internalize these and form their own stories. I remember doing this all the time as a kid: I read Anne of Green Gables and promptly named every tree and body of water near our home like Anne did. After reading about Harriet Tubman I remember pretending to be abolitionists with my best friend; we would explore the woods on my parents’ farm, looking to see which side of the tree the moss was growing on, because of course we knew how to determine which way was North based on that because of the books we read. I acted out scenes from the American Girl Josefina books outside; I made up my own stories based on my favorite western novels with my paper dolls. My kids do this, too; they pretend they’re the cats in the warrior novels. My oldest has made “worlds” on Minecraft for multiple books we have read. They quote books we have read in their play; even my three-year-old does this. Again, if their minds aren’t being filled with these stories, they can’t recreate them in their own lives.

2. Books help us see things through another’s point-of-view. My oldest daughter was first exposed to racism through reading the American Girl: Melody books; they helped her see what it would have been like to live during segregation and be treated differently because her skin was a different color. When we read the first in the American Girl: Felicity series this year, my six-year-old (who is also my animal lover) was heartbroken to read about Penny the horse being mistreated by her owner. We also discussed how Felicity lied to her parents and misbehaved by sneaking out, and the different nuances of both her decision and her parent’s. They saw the story through multiple perspectives, and were the better for it. In the Read-Aloud Family, Sarah Mackenzie talks about her experience reading A Long Walk to Water, a novel by Linda Sue Park about the Sudan water crisis. Mackenzie says “A book can reach us where a news report cannot. It’s not when we hear a summary on the news of what’s happening in the Middle East that our heart catches fire. It’s when we hear the story of one person– one man, one woman, one child. It’s when we dig out the thorn in Nya’s foot, journey with her for hours in the stifling African sun, experience her loneliness and her fear. It is then that we feel the human-to-human connection. That’s when our empathy is stirred. That’s when we feel fully human.” But how does this connect to creativity? Because we cannot be creative without learning to see things differently than normal. As we stretch our empathy, we become more of who God made us to be, seeing how we can use the gifts inside for the good of others, because in the end creativity without love is useless. And this brings me to my final point…

3. Books help our kids reach their God-given potential. Inside of each of your and my children are a wealth of talents, ideas, and strengths that the world needs to see more of. I’m concerned when I hear parents talking about wanting their kids “to fit in.” This is NOT in my family’s vision statement. I don’t want my children to be the same as every other kid their age; I want them to be the person God made them to be, with their own unique personality and gifts. A childhood spent exploring great books helps our kids grow more into themselves; the little bits and pieces of each book read help them more clearly see how God has created them and what He has created them to do. Maybe, like I did as a child, they connected with Jo in Little Women, as she found solace in writing, and through that they see that writing is a way to express themself. Maybe they travel across the prairie with Laura Ingalls and discover a sense of adventure inside them. Maybe they want to grow up to be like Anne Shirley and love their family wholeheartedly as Anne does as a wife and mother. Books reach inside us and bring to light all the hidden parts of us, they guide us and pull at us and shape us until we find who God made us to be.

As you read with your children, consider how and why they are connecting with characters. Give them space to imagine and room to create. Help them see stories and people differently than they have before. Encourage them to live the vibrant life God has created them for, using the best tool possible: great books.