The Who - Parents
Parenting is one of the most challenging jobs there is. Creativity is a powerful tool to meet challenge. Develop it in yourself, support it in your children, demand it in your child’s environments. Most of all, become aware of the little ways our modern culture robs our children of a natural chance to develop their own creative skills.
What can you do? Examine how you help your child learn. In our well-intentioned desire to give our children every advantage in an increasingly global and competitive world, we sometimes teach our children by giving them our answers. When we do that, we train them to believe that solutions come from the outside, that someone else will always know what to do. We may inadvertently reduce opportunities for divergent thinking – thinking that produces many options – an important creative thinking skill. Instead, use questions. Allow discovery, exploration and experimentation. Most of all, allow mistakes. Help your children become acquainted - and comfortable - with mistakes and failure. Help them develop a healthy strategy with which to respond. Without at first failing to succeed, how else will they try and try again?
Research and best practice in the fields of creativity and gifted education are closely related. Certified gifted ed specialists are trained to help all students – not just students participating in gifted programs. If you are lucky enough to live where the school has a gifted education and/or enrichment department, access the expertise of the certified gifted ed specialists and their resources for creativity.
Books
Light Up Your Child’s Mind, by Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis (Little Brown, 2009)
Mindset, by Carol Dweck (Ballantine Books, 2008)
Awakening Your Child’s Natural Genius, by Thomas Armstrong (Tarcher/Putnam Books, 1991)
Online
Parenting Tool Kit
http://www.ismetmamnoon.com/parenting-tool-kit.html
Creativity, NAGC (Nat’l Assoc. for Gifted Children)
http://www.nagc.org/search/node/creativity
The Art of Mistakes Book Preview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDfc9HlLFOQ
Parenting is one of the most challenging jobs there is. Creativity is a powerful tool to meet challenge. Develop it in yourself, support it in your children, demand it in your child’s environments. Most of all, become aware of the little ways our modern culture robs our children of a natural chance to develop their own creative skills.
What can you do? Examine how you help your child learn. In our well-intentioned desire to give our children every advantage in an increasingly global and competitive world, we sometimes teach our children by giving them our answers. When we do that, we train them to believe that solutions come from the outside, that someone else will always know what to do. We may inadvertently reduce opportunities for divergent thinking – thinking that produces many options – an important creative thinking skill. Instead, use questions. Allow discovery, exploration and experimentation. Most of all, allow mistakes. Help your children become acquainted - and comfortable - with mistakes and failure. Help them develop a healthy strategy with which to respond. Without at first failing to succeed, how else will they try and try again?
Research and best practice in the fields of creativity and gifted education are closely related. Certified gifted ed specialists are trained to help all students – not just students participating in gifted programs. If you are lucky enough to live where the school has a gifted education and/or enrichment department, access the expertise of the certified gifted ed specialists and their resources for creativity.
Books
Light Up Your Child’s Mind, by Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis (Little Brown, 2009)
Mindset, by Carol Dweck (Ballantine Books, 2008)
Awakening Your Child’s Natural Genius, by Thomas Armstrong (Tarcher/Putnam Books, 1991)
Online
Parenting Tool Kit
http://www.ismetmamnoon.com/parenting-tool-kit.html
Creativity, NAGC (Nat’l Assoc. for Gifted Children)
http://www.nagc.org/search/node/creativity
The Art of Mistakes Book Preview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDfc9HlLFOQ