Episode 41: Creative Kids, Creative Parents
We came back to chat about creativity and creative practice again with Cyrielle from Unschooling and Thriving, and Kendel from spark.to.flame.homelearning joined in and added her perspective. We shared insights about our children’s creativity and our own, and ways we consider and support them and ourselves, both practically and thoughtfully. This was a really interesting conversation with a lot of little nuggets throughout that helped us zero in on the value of various forms and aspects of creativity and the ways we can invest in our families and ourselves to support well-being and create joy. Please join us for a listen. 🙂
We Discuss:
Traditional versus more expansive views of creativity
Collections and display/set-ups
Digital creativity
Strewing as a way of inviting our child to something we think they’ll enjoy
The enormous range of opportunity for creating digitally, including Minecraft
Creativity within a particular creative practice, so creativity within creativity ☺️
The way that children will combine different materials and toys within the same play
The physical management of creative supplies and toys – strategies and ideas
World play set-up encompassing large amounts of space
Developing a respect for creativity in play – the importance of trying not to knock things over in physical set-ups, or interrupt in the midst of creative online play
The state of flow in learning and how there can be an in-the-moment flow and also a parallel flow that kind of floats along and continues day to day during a period of immersion
Navigating creative set-up in an RV or small house
Transition and processing time within neurodivergence – different things take different amounts of time for different people
Group pretend play
That it can take us, as parents, time to transition out of our own creative flow, including time to wind down our social interactions and the value of respecting the same in children
Creativity in our kids as feeding into their well-being
Confidence being built through creation and presentation
Creative practices as ways to experiment with and establish identity
Self-determination theory and observing the different aspects shining through in a child’s creative practice
Encouraging our kids without pushing
Originality and learning from trial and error
The incredible gift of open time, space and opportunity for a child to have agency over their outcome
Offering our kids high-quality materials
How using low quality materials and equipment can create frustration or barriers if enjoyment is less
Finding materials that create opportunities for “do-overs” as leading to a sense of abundance
Keeping materials easily accessible – both for our children and for ourselves
That finding ways to respect everyone’s interests, hobbies and space is a form of creatively in itself
Offering ourselves high-quality materials, equipment and programs
Multi-layered forms of creativity
Monetizing creativity and the various ways of thinking about it
Our tendency to source out and purchase materials for our children before ourselves
Other people noticing our multi-faceted forms of creativity
Investing in ourselves – gifts to ourselves for our own enjoyment and as vehicles for self-expression
That abundance doesn’t always have to be in the form of a monetary resource – for either us or our children
Adding things that weren’t there before – even adding things to social media or an online community as a form of creativity
Narrating anecdotes to our children about our own joy and creativity and well-being
Striking a balance with creative sales and services
Communicating with our family about how we can find time and space for own endeavours and describing the “both/and” of enjoying being with our child and also needing time to ourselves or for others
Finding the glimmers in the small things we’re already doing during seasons we can’t as easily carve out time for ourselves
The natural emergence of creativity – choosing what to do, when, how much, etc – and the way that can lead to fulfillment
That sometimes kids are finished with something before they reach what would be considered a final outcome, but it has served its purpose for them, possibly as a stepping stone to something else, but possibly just an end in and of itself
Resources:
Reclaiming your Time – Unschooling and Thriving
Episode #37: Nurturing our Well-being Through Creative Practices