Creativity is sometimes painted as a black or white trait: Either a child is creative or isn't. Adding insult to irony, creativity is often used as a euphemism for artsy-craftsy inclinations, as if those preclude a future as CEO.
The authors of a book due this month, The Missing Alphabet: A Parent's Guide to Developing Creative Thinking in Kids (Greenleaf Book Group Press), contend that creativity not only can be learned, it also must be cultivated for success in our digital world.
"When they invented the three Rs, there were no computers," said Susan Marcus, who with her coauthors founded the Learning About Learning Educational Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, and has helped produce after-school programs. "Most of what comes to us now on all of our screens is visual and auditory information and iconography, and kids are fabulous consumers of it, but they need to learn how to be creative with it."
She and her co-authors contend that the sensory alphabet (line, colour, texture, sound, movement, rhythm, space, light and shape) is as fundamental as text and numbers in teaching a child to innovate and solve problems. Equipping kids with the sensory alphabet gives them a vocabulary to express and pursue their ideas.
The book lays out how to use the sensory alphabet to identify and nurture a child's strengths and patterns as a creative thinker. A child who seems relaxed after lots of messy play, for instance, may thrive on texture, which is not to excuse a pigsty room. Rather, the parent might provide time each day for messy play (that gets cleaned up).
"You're helping them develop these metacogni-tive skills: What are the ways that help me do my best work?" said co-author Susie Monday. "When you study the work of people who do a good job in life, they are people who trust the sensory information in their lives. They're aware of how they set up a work space that works best for them, because they need this kind of order - or disorder - to honour that ... creativity."
They cite research that blows holes in some parents' quest to "fix" a child's weaknesses or mould her in their own image.
"If we have a child who's very different from us - for example, the family is very social, and the child likes to play with blocks in a corner - and we allow that kid to have a taste of other ways of being but also allow him time to play with blocks in a corner, he's going to get better development than if we try to go against the grain," said co-author Cynthia Herbert, a developmental psychologist.
"The research shows kids will get to where they need to go faster and easier if we support where their natural strengths are. It's paradoxical, the more confident you feel in things you are good at, the more willing you are to dip your toe in new worlds." THE JUNK JAR
Here's an exercise for parents and children from the book, The Missing Alphabet:
1. Fill a jar with tidbits such as a feather, shell, coin, ribbon, rock, twig, button, pine cone.
2. Each person picks an item. (Parents can note what the child's choice says about the diversity of minds.)
3. Each studies the object and writes or mentions adjectives to describe it. Consider it as a historian would, a scientist, a painter, a choreographer or any other viewpoint you can imagine.
4. Answer questions such as: If this object were a time of day, what would that be? If it were a season, which one? If an animal, which? What about a machine?
5. Review your list, then decide what kind of person those qualities could describe. How old? What would he/she look like? What would he/she be wearing? Where would he/she live?
6. Now develop a full-fledged character for the object. Maybe the character could become the star of a story or drawing. Or if you're doing this with several people, the characters could come together for a play. Record new ideas that emerge over the next few days.
