Have you ever noticed how creative children are? A rock becomes a fortress. A tree becomes a house. A cloud can become a monster. Anything can become anything. Their imaginations are amazing. One of our jobs as parents is to strengthen our children's creativity. Some children are creative artistically. Some are creative in sports. Some are creative mathematically. Some are great at building. Each child has different strengths. We as parents can see that. Even in one and two year olds, it often is visible to parents and we can start building on it. If we can help our children give voice to their strengths, we give them a huge gift. In addition, as parents, if we can do that for ourselves, if it hasn't already been done for us, we help our children. We can share in each others creative strengths. For instance, if we have a child who likes to do jigsaw puzzles, it might be something we like to do too. In doing it together, it becomes a bonding activity that strengthens our relationship.
Recently, I was able to view a couple of the amazing structures at Brickon 2010 in Seattle. It struck me the lego builders were amazingly creative. One gentleman said that he only had 55,000 legos, whereas a number of other builders had 1,000,000 legos. People built these without kits, just from their own creativity. It was also a brick by brick by brick endeavor. One small, teeny lego on top of another small, teeny lego multiplied thousands of time over thousands of hours. Putting legos together, sorting them and figuring out how the legos were going to fit together. That was all part of the creativity process and the fun. To someone who doesn't like legos, this might be a form of torture. To someone who loves legos, it is work, but it is a type of work that you get lost in. It becomes a labor of love.
As parents, anytime we can help our children find the things that are their individual labors of love -- and task that they are willing to get lost in for hours and hours and hours while building one lego at a time, or one drawing at a time, or one note at a time, we are strengthening their creative muscle. Learning a sport is one kick, one throw, one run at a time. Writing becomes writing a sentence, then a paragraph, then a page, then a story. Each lego, each note, each word is a tiny step that builds into a beautiful creation that means something to each of us. As parents, if we can help our children find that thing that they love enough to build and then help them when they want to knock all the legos over because they are overwhelmed, or frustrated, or bored, they will take their creativity to levels we cannot begin to imagine.
