Creativity is one of the defining characteristics of being human. Few people don’t remember the joy of picking up a pack of crayons and going crazy on the page. For many of us, whether it was due to a lack of encouragement or preoccupation with other interests, the creative impulse withered on the vine. The more we learn, the more we understand how vital expressing creativity is to our mental health and how encouraging creativity in children can protect them throughout their lives.
Nurturing Creativity is Nurturing Creative Problem Solving
There are many forms of creativity. When most people think of creativity, they immediately think of music or the other arts. While artistic pursuits are an excellent place to build creative strategies for problem-solving, these are actually skills that you can learn and apply to almost any activity. The arts are an excellent tool for teaching the creative problem solving that can be implemented in any field. If you consider the difficulties involved with representing a three-dimensional object in two-dimensional space, the logical sequence of thoughts involved with building a structure out of clay or another media or the conceptualization of creating and presenting music, it's clear how these activities reinforce basic problem-solving skills.
Creativity Can Help Children Conquer Self-Destructive Habits
Art gives children a safe space to express themselves. Expressing negative emotions through art is both healthy and therapeutic. Children who are battling depression can learn to channel these emotions through creativity instead of self-harm. The evidence for the transformational power of creativity is well established. Organizations like the AA and alternatives to AA use creativity to stop negative habits and develop a healthy outlet for negative emotions. The lack of an appropriate coping mechanism is a major cause of self-destructive behavior. Helping your kids build the tools they need to cope with negative emotions will benefit them for the rest of their life.
Creative Pursuits Facilitate Cognitive Development
An article published by the University of Southern California shows how the brains of children who train in music develop faster, particularly in the areas of sound, speech, reading and language development. This is more significant than a simple accumulation of related skills. Neural pathways have actually been strengthened in musically active children, making their processing power effectively stronger.
Recent research has shown that the visual arts facilitate development in areas of the brain responsible for spatial reasoning and perception. These are important functions for your future engineers, doctors, and architects. This is why music and arts education is a vital part of elementary school curriculum. Encouraging creativity not only gives our kids emotional coping mechanisms through creative expression, but it can also help them be more successful in their future careers.
Creative Pursuits can Help Our Kids Build Confidence
Many people see artistic ability as a natural talent rather than the progressive accumulation of skill that it truly is. Creative pursuits give children the opportunity to witness their own improvement and gain confidence from gradually increasing mastery over these skills with consistent and repeated effort. They can also teach kids how to manage and persevere through failure. There's a mysterious point in every work of art when what looks like an uncertain attempt becomes something incredible through perseverance. These are skills that will help them face the many challenges of life.
Many practically minded people have held the opinion that creative pursuits in children are a frivolous distraction. Unfortunately, when funding is tight, some of the first programs to get cut in schools are art and music programs. Don’t let this happen in your community. The more we learn how critical it is to mental health, the more important it is to safeguard the well-being of our kids by encouraging them to be creative every chance that we get.
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