When my youngest daughter was little, she was watching a nature show when she exclaimed with delight that there were monkeys that glowed in the dark! It took a moment for the rest of the family to realize what she was seeing. David Attenborough was filming in the jungle at night using a special night vision camera that made the monkeys glow green. We laughed at it for a while, but then it became such a lovely idea that there could be monkeys in the jungle somewhere on Earth that glow in the dark. The possibility was real enough as there are other glowing creatures on the planet. We kept this idea going as we discussed the benefits of being able to glow in the dark, hide in trees, and scare parrots. Although it was silly, fostering this level of creative thinking is a great skill to learn. If we want to encourage creativity in children, we need to work with their imagination and ideas to see if they can develop the ideas. You could consider if the monkeys can be seen during the day, how do they shine? Is it due to something they eat? The process of coming up with more ideas is a fun activity and it doesn’t matter if it leads nowhere.
When my son entertains us with these little mental challenges, his mind amazes me: he sees the world from a very different point of view than the rest of us; and she keeps us on our toes. But there is a but… He rarely sleeps before 10pm despite being under 9 years old. She never stops. There’s always something you’re working on or trying to create, drawing and sketching, writing novels (yes) and poetry, baking and painting, then you can pick out some flowers to display, ask how to make a fabric collage… And I’m not kidding when I say that all of this could have happened before 8:30 on Saturday morning.
My son has an insatiable need to create. He wants to be in the PROCESS at all times and in more than one PROJECT. At the moment there is the photographic project: we take walks in the local countryside and photograph the change of season, currently the beautiful change from summer to autumn. Walking then takes on a new life of PROJECT; she is frustrated that he can’t get the image right and his ‘creative temper’ takes over. We have swings of self-loathing, glory, depression, enjoyment and then others. The other ‘one the go’ project at the moment is a series of books that he is writing, he illustrates and his grandmother ‘publishes’ them with proper binding and covers. She is very proud of this work and often criticizes herself for advice to improve.
These things are projects that you tend to work on entirely. But her spirit is creative, and that’s where it becomes a challenge to be a mother effectively. You need time to ‘reflect’, and this is a time of complete inactivity where you will simply stare into space or stare at a television screen (or other screen) for quite some time, sometimes a couple of hours, before getting up and spreading out. the house with paint, chalk, paper and a camera, or whatever the project requires.
Another characteristic of this creative spirit is that he can be on a totally different train of thought than all of us: he gets frustrated because we don’t know what he needs or what he’s talking about. His thought processes have been buzzing for hours and he needs some answers right away, and when we look for an answer in our imagination and brain, he gets very angry and angry at us.
When I was little I realized that it was a very different spirit, my other two children were equally artistic and enjoyed all the same things, but the little girl went further. She needed so much physical stimulation as a little girl that bedtime was more like an hour at a playground to calm her down. I attended classes at JABADEO and with the INPP to learn about Developmental Movement Play and applied it to her. She loved it and I learned how much to help her explore the natural state of her spinning, rolling and bouncing. I watched until she was just satisfied and then she was able to calm down.
Likewise, you now need a lot of information to stay on track. You have such varied methods of expressing this need that we keep it folded with paper and notebooks, pens and paints, a permanent art station in the garage, and a white bedroom wall that is your ‘canvas’ – you’re allowed to do whatever you want. on that wall whether it be posters or doodles or stickers. With the confines of the single white wall, you can go exploring in your own space and curb your art exuberance a bit at home!
I have two other children, both of whom are bright, intelligent, and artistic, but they never needed the intense input that my youngest needs. I have worked for more than 25 years in teaching and, in particular, in the practice of the first years; I have seen some other children with this same impulse; they are also those that receive another title, usually ADHD or Asperger’s. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that they’re so creative: they think in different ways, but instead of being suspicious of those differences, looking at her from a creative point of view, I can see how she’s working through a journey – in a way not prescribed – to an undisclosed end. No wonder he sometimes thinks we’re all from another planet!
Dealing with a child whose creative spirit is so prolific can be an exercise in constant failure to adequately support him. I have talked to other parents who also find this aspect of their child’s development challenging. By allowing yourself this creativity, your child settles down, satisfying his need to see what else he can accomplish. Parents should remember to pause a bit, step back, and wait before judging the weird things their child might be doing. I was concerned about a child in my preschool who was constantly painting pieces of paper orange. He was almost 5 years old and the other practitioners thought that he was far below his developmental level, but for 3 days he continued like this. Piece after piece of orange painted A4 paper – at the end of the third day session he brought them all to me – wanted to tear them into long strips – I let him do this and helped – when we were done he put them all together and used glue to make a campfire on the display wall. It was November 4! You never know what your project will be.
When my son is hot, he is angry, dull, frustrated, awake, tearful, and generally miserable. When we can’t give him total freedom to satisfy his creativity, he’s a different girl. This is not indulgence to the extent that we do not indulge in his every whim. He often wants to make up a poem just before bed or make a short film early in the morning. Most kids want a little more time and she should be treated the same way. She has learned to deal with this worry on her own and now she has some strategies to prevent her from getting frustrated, write her plans, mind maps before bed, stick sticky notes or make mood charts. These little tricks help her stay focused on her project but working with the rest of the family.
She is a total joy, sometimes she is a total wacko. She asks the most fabulously strange questions and creates the most fabulous books and poems, movies and photographs. She said that when she grew up she wanted to be a teacher or a butterfly. Great way to think about career options!