Life In The Middle

Help Your Children Develop Their Imagination And Creativity

Life is pretty simple to a kid. They really don’t need any more than a couple of cardboard boxes to create a train, hiding place, house, or a race car. Another kid can take a red blanket and presto! He’s Superman. When I was about six, a pile of colorful smooth river rocks became a circus, spread out over the back patio. That cheap entertainment kept me busy for weeks!

Unfortunately we quickly squash a child’s simple creativity with the cheap clutter of “REAL STUFF”. A Barbie doll must only have the latest style creations from Mattel. Forget the cheap silk scarves, rubber bands, yarn, or leftover scraps of materials that a child nimbly fashioned into the best dressed model walking the Cat Walk in any Paris fashion house.

It doesn’t take very long before a child learns his creativity is never as good as the amount of money parents can spend on things the manufacturer’s factory tells them you MUST have! This is a real tragedy. We squelch creativity and ingenuity, and replace it with plastic toys that ring and light up, and talk to us. (Of course they last only as long as the batteries), or the wheels break off, or the paint wears off the race car.

Something I have noticed with the turn down in the economy is the cut in the budgets spent on children. Maybe it isn’t important for Susie to have an iphone at about $500 .Perhaps a simple slim phone at $30 and a limited calling card is more than enough. In this and other ways young people can get by with less. They can learn to make do with what they have. Maybe creativity can still be a part of a child’s life. It would be cool to let their imagination come up with things to play with.

It’s amazing how many parents are pushing their kids out of childhood. The problems and concerns that are placed on a child makes the image of a six year old working along side their parents, on the farm, look like happy times!

I have seen ten to twelve year olds in the pediatric unit, depressed and suicidal, on medications for ADDH (Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity), and being taught about what to expect when they deliver their baby in three weeks. There isn’t room in their lives for creativity and play, when they are dealing with drugs, alcohol, and sexual issues.

I recognize that parenting today is often accomplished in sound bites. Before school, after school, between sports events, or via the Internet when a parent is away from home. But parents and their children can use some creativity to make it work.

The thing we must realize is there are hundreds of thousands of kids out there who really have some overwhelming situations to overcome. YOUR children are playing with some of these kids. After all drug and alcohol babies eventually grow up, and they are the ones who are distracting your child in the classroom. Children are being shuffled from foster home to foster home, because there are no responsible family members to provide them with a safe environment. How is creativity and inquisitiveness encouraged for such children?

If you have children and want to do one of the most important things in their lives, be sure to help them develop their imagination and encourage them to be inquisitive. You may be helping some future scientist, or psychologist to come up with a way to help others overcome their inability to dream and add more to their life.

It’s a tragedy to waste a child’s imagination and creativity. Provide an environment and encouragement to let these things blossom. Remember, young people have their entire lives to solve lives’ problems. They don’t have to do this while growing up. Think about it. Until later...Colleen

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Copyright 2009 Leland Pulley